Patent Application
20110029516
A web usage pattern insight platform provides management of an information system and its content. In some situations, analytics data for a large web site can consume large amounts of storage and overwhelm users with information overload. For example, user behavior can de difficult to quantify and analyze for relevant feedback, particularly as systems scale upwards. Obtaining insights based on this behavior can require significant human effort and risks operator bias and error. Furthermore, as the amount of data increases, any human-realizable insights become too shallow or out of date to be useful.
A web usage pattern insight platform may be provided. This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter. Nor is this Summary intended to be used to limit the claimed subject matter's scope.
A web site usage pattern insight platform may be provided. User behaviors associated with web page requests, including search queries, may be captured and analyzed to provide usage pattern insights. The pattern insights may be aggregated across a plurality of users and may be used to provide recommendations for improving a system that hosts the web pages.
Both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description provide examples and are explanatory only. Accordingly, the foregoing general description and the following detailed description should not be considered to be restrictive. Further, features or variations may be provided in addition to those set forth herein. For example, embodiments may be directed to various feature combinations and sub-combinations described in the detailed description.
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of this disclosure, illustrate various embodiments of the present invention. In the drawings:
The following detailed description refers to the accompanying drawings. Wherever possible, the same reference numbers are used in the drawings and the following description to refer to the same or similar elements. While embodiments of the invention may be described, modifications, adaptations, and other implementations are possible. For example, substitutions, additions, or modifications may be made to the elements illustrated in the drawings, and the methods described herein may be modified by substituting, reordering, or adding stages to the disclosed methods. Accordingly, the following detailed description does not limit the invention. Instead, the proper scope of the invention is defined by the appended claims.
A web usage pattern insight platform may be provided. Consistent with embodiments of the present invention, user behaviors associated with both client and server devices may be captured and analyzed to provide various insights that may be used to improve users' experiences with a web site. Behaviors such as counting the number of times a page is loaded, user dwell times, and page element interactions may be logged by the insight platform, analyzed, and aggregated into behavior reports with recommendations to improve site performance and utility. Multi-dimensional reports of behavior patterns may then be presented to site administrators. For example, trends may be identified in user traffic that may result in hardware upgrade recommendations, with in depth details available to the administrator through searches and filtering.
The retrieved web page may comprise a plurality of rendering instructions encoded in a markup language, such as HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The markup language may provide a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document by identifying the structure of text elements as links, headings, paragraphs, lists. The markup language may also supplement the text with objects such as form controls, images, and executable scripts. Executable scripts may enable programmatic access to other objects on the page and to hardware and/or software associated with client 110. For example, a logging object may be operative to detect activities associated with user interface devices attached to client 110, such as a keyboard and/or mouse, and store the detected activity on a local storage device, such as RAM and/or a hard drive.
Method 200 may then advance to stage 220 where computing device 300 may send the requested page to client 110. For example, site farm 120 may locate the page at the request's URL and transmit the page via a network. A server associated with site farm 120 may also process properties associated with the request. For example, site farm 120 may process a search query by providing a plurality of search results and/or process form element options and provide a response according to those options.
From stage 220, where computing device 300 sent the requested page to the requesting client, method 200 may advance to stage 230 where computing device 300 may capture a user behavior associated with the requested page. User behaviors associated with either and/or both of the web server and the requesting client may be captured. For example, on the server side, a server-side logging object may increment a hit counter associated with the requested page and/or track an amount of bandwidth and/or storage used by pages stored on site farm 120. On the client side, client 110 may comprise a client-side logging object operative to log whether a user bookmarks, saves, and/or prints the page and/or a search result, a time at which client 110 selects a new page to view, whether or not client 110 ends a search on a result received from site farm 120.
Consistent with embodiments of the invention, captured user behaviors may be stored from client 110 and/or site farm 120 to a different computing device, such as logging server 130. Logging server 130 may be co-located at site farm 120 or may be located at a geographically distinct site.
Computing device 300 may also categorize each captured user behavior and/or associate user information with each captured behavior. For example, a plurality of user behaviors may be associated with a common identifier, such as a user ID. Categories may comprise, for example, inventory, traffic, and/or search. For example, inventory behaviors may comprise such elements as a number of servers associated with site farm 120, a number of sites, applications, and/or pages hosted on site farm 120, and/or an amount of free/used memory on servers associated with site farm 120. Traffic behaviors may comprise elements such as bandwidth used, page hit counts, referrer counts and identifiers. Search behaviors may comprise elements such as a count and/or list of search queries, numbers of results returned for any and/or all search queries, and/or numbers of failed queries.
From stage 230, method 200 may advance to stage 240 where computing device 300 may analyze the captured user behavior(s) to identify usage patterns associated with the requested page and/or web site. Analytics server 140 may process a single user's captured behaviors to identify patterns associated with a single page request and/or the user's interactions with several pages hosted by site farm 120.
From stage 240, method 200 may advance to stage 250 where computing device 300 may aggregate patterns identified from behaviors associated with multiple users. For example, analytics server 140 may aggregate page hits from multiple users to provide a total hit count for a web page. Computing device 300 may provide a report of the identified behaviors, such as to site administrator 150.
Consistent with embodiments of the invention, behaviors may be analyzed to identify multiple usage patterns and/or trends. For example, a particular search query may not return any search results or may return results that a user does not select to follow. A usage pattern of rejecting the results and/or repeating or revising the search may be identified. Computing device 300 may provide a report listing any and/or all of the queries that return unsatisfactory results. Aggregating the queries may identify variants and/or general subject areas that may benefit from improvement.
For another example, computing device 300 may provide a report detailing which pages are being hit and/or trends in traffic volume for pages and/or sites. The report may, for example, help direct higher revenue ads to popular pages and/or help direct system upgrades (e.g. memory and/or bandwidth) to improve availability. A report may help identify which day of the week has the most and/or least page hits.
Usage patterns may be centered around the idea of intent. A user who requests a page or issues a search query may have some intent that may not be visible to the system that's providing the data or the results from the search query. The system, such as a server of site farm 120, may see a key word that the user entered in a search query or the navigation that is happening on a particular page. Computing device 300 may analyze these user behaviors to try and identify the user's intent. For example, a search query may apply to two domains, such as a search query of “windows”. The system may not be able to determine from the query term alone whether the user may mean building materials or the Windows® operating system. Analyzing the user's behavior patterns may comprise capturing the domains of the results returned on the search query and capturing the user's reactions to the results. For example, a user spending a longer time on results associated with exterior doors and windows while ignoring results associated with computer systems may identify the user's intent. Each time a user interacts with these results, the system may gain more and more insight into users' behaviors. For example, if most users select the same results, the system may place those results higher in the list of search results when the same query is entered.
Consistent with embodiments of the invention, a plurality of reports may be provided based on the captured behaviors and identified patterns. Each of the reports may be filtered by an accessing user, such as by specifying a date range, or a scope of pages for which to view data. Table 1 comprises a non-exhaustive list of example reports and Table 2 comprises a sample summary report. Reports and lists of identified patterns may be provided as a web page and/or a syndicated feed and may be customized according to a user to whom the report is provided. For example, an administrator may see more detailed statistics than an end-user requesting a publicly available report.
From stage 250, where computing device 300 aggregated the identified patterns into a usage report, method 200 may advance to stage 260 where computing device 300 may determine whether the identified usage patterns may indicate an improvement that may be made to the page and/or site. For example, analytics server 140 may determine which search queries result in unsatisfactory search results and rank them according to their popularity.
If, at stage 260, computing device 300 determines that an improvement may be made, method 200 may advance to stage 270 where computing device 300 may provide a recommendation. For example, is analytics server 140 identifies a search query that returns unsatisfactory results, analytics server 140 may recommend adding content to the page and/or website or adding suggested search results to the site. For another example, if a site experiences a high server load during an indentified time of day, analytics server 140 may recommend reducing back-end processing load (e.g. backups and maintenance) during this time. Once computing device 300 provides a recommendation in stage 270, or if no improvements are determined in stage 260, method 200 may end at stage 280.
An embodiment consistent with the invention may comprise a system for providing web usage pattern insights. The system may comprise a memory storage and a processing unit coupled to the memory storage. The processing unit may be operative to capture a plurality of user behaviors, analyze the plurality of user behaviors to identify a usage pattern, and provide a report of the identified usage pattern. The report may be customized for various users, such as by restricting some behaviors, statistics, and/or patterns from some users. Users may also provide attributes, such as through a user interface element, for filtering the reports. Such attributes may comprise, for example, a user, a date range, a content type, a search scope, and an exclusion criteria.
Another embodiment consistent with the invention may comprise a system for providing web usage pattern insights. The system may comprise a memory storage and a processing unit coupled to the memory storage. The processing unit may be operative to capture a plurality of usage data associated with a web page request, categorize each of the plurality of usage data, analyze the plurality of usage data to identify a usage pattern, and provide a report of the identified usage pattern. The identified usage patterns and the report may be categorized based on the source and/or application of the underlying usage data. Categories may comprise, for example, traffic, search, and inventory. The processing unit may be further operative to configure the report's layout, such as by specifying fonts, colors, and/or templates for web-based reports.
Yet another embodiment consistent with the invention may comprise a system for providing a web site usage insight platform. The system may comprise a memory storage and a processing unit coupled to the memory storage. The processing unit may be operative to receive a request for a web page from a client, send the requested web page to the client, capture a plurality of user behaviors associated with the client, identify at least one usage pattern according to the captured plurality of user behaviors, aggregate the identified at least one usage pattern with a plurality of other usage patterns identified according to a plurality of other user behaviors associated with at least one other client, determine whether the aggregated usage patterns indicate a potential system improvement according to at least one configurable metric, and provide a recommendation for improving the system
With reference to
Computing device 300 may have additional features or functionality. For example, computing device 300 may also include additional data storage devices (removable and/or non-removable) such as, for example, magnetic disks, optical disks, or tape. Such additional storage is illustrated in
Computing device 300 may also contain a communication connection 316 that may allow device 300 to communicate with other computing devices 318, such as over a network in a distributed computing environment, for example, an intranet or the Internet. Communication connection 316 is one example of communication media. Communication media may typically be embodied by computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules, or other data in a modulated data signal, such as a carrier wave or other transport mechanism, and includes any information delivery media. The term “modulated data signal” may describe a signal that has one or more characteristics set or changed in such a manner as to encode information in the signal. By way of example, and not limitation, communication media may include wired media such as a wired network or direct-wired connection, and wireless media such as acoustic, radio frequency (RF), infrared, and other wireless media. The term computer readable media as used herein may include both storage media and communication media.
As stated above, a number of program modules and data files may be stored in system memory 304, including operating system 305. While executing on processing unit 302, programming modules 306 (e.g. analytics platform 320) may perform processes including, for example, one or more method 200's stages as described above. The aforementioned process is an example, and processing unit 302 may perform other processes. Other programming modules that may be used in accordance with embodiments of the present invention may include electronic mail and contacts applications, word processing applications, spreadsheet applications, database applications, slide presentation applications, drawing or computer-aided application programs, etc.
Generally, consistent with embodiments of the invention, program modules may include routines, programs, components, data structures, and other types of structures that may perform particular tasks or that may implement particular abstract data types. Moreover, embodiments of the invention may be practiced with other computer system configurations, including hand-held devices, multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics, minicomputers, mainframe computers, and the like. Embodiments of the invention may also be practiced in distributed computing environments where tasks are performed by remote processing devices that are linked through a communications network. In a distributed computing environment, program modules may be located in both local and remote memory storage devices.
Furthermore, embodiments of the invention may be practiced in an electrical circuit comprising discrete electronic elements, packaged or integrated electronic chips containing logic gates, a circuit utilizing a microprocessor, or on a single chip containing electronic elements or microprocessors. Embodiments of the invention may also be practiced using other technologies capable of performing logical operations such as, for example, AND, OR, and NOT, including but not limited to mechanical, optical, fluidic, and quantum technologies. In addition, embodiments of the invention may be practiced within a general purpose computer or in any other circuits or systems.
Embodiments of the invention, for example, may be implemented as a computer process (method), a computing system, or as an article of manufacture, such as a computer program product or computer readable media. The computer program product may be a computer storage media readable by a computer system and encoding a computer program of instructions for executing a computer process. The computer program product may also be a propagated signal on a carrier readable by a computing system and encoding a computer program of instructions for executing a computer process. Accordingly, the present invention may be embodied in hardware and/or in software (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.). In other words, embodiments of the present invention may take the form of a computer program product on a computer-usable or computer-readable storage medium having computer-usable or computer-readable program code embodied in the medium for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system. A computer-usable or computer-readable medium may be any medium that can contain, store, communicate, propagate, or transport the program for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, or device.
The computer-usable or computer-readable medium may be, for example but not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, device, or propagation medium. More specific computer-readable medium examples (a non-exhaustive list), the computer-readable medium may include the following: an electrical connection having one or more wires, a portable computer diskette, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or Flash memory), an optical fiber, and a portable compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM). Note that the computer-usable or computer-readable medium could even be paper or another suitable medium upon which the program is printed, as the program can be electronically captured, via, for instance, optical scanning of the paper or other medium, then compiled, interpreted, or otherwise processed in a suitable manner, if necessary, and then stored in a computer memory.
Embodiments of the present invention, for example, are described above with reference to block diagrams and/or operational illustrations of methods, systems, and computer program products according to embodiments of the invention. The functions/acts noted in the blocks may occur out of the order as shown in any flowchart. For example, two blocks shown in succession may in fact be executed substantially concurrently or the blocks may sometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon the functionality/acts involved.
While certain embodiments of the invention have been described, other embodiments may exist. Furthermore, although embodiments of the present invention have been described as being associated with data stored in memory and other storage mediums, data can also be stored on or read from other types of computer-readable media, such as secondary storage devices, like hard disks, floppy disks, or a CD-ROM, a carrier wave from the Internet, or other forms of RAM or ROM. Further, the disclosed methods' stages may be modified in any manner, including by reordering stages and/or inserting or deleting stages, without departing from the invention.
All rights including copyrights in the code included herein are vested in and the property of the Applicant. The Applicant retains and reserves all rights in the code included herein, and grants permission to reproduce the material only in connection with reproduction of the granted patent and for no other purpose.
While the specification includes examples, the invention's scope is indicated by the following claims. Furthermore, while the specification has been described in language specific to structural features and/or methodological acts, the claims are not limited to the features or acts described above. Rather, the specific features and acts described above are disclosed as example for embodiments of the invention.
Related U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/492,704, filed on Jun. 26, 2009 entitled “Platform for Configurable Logging Instrumentation,” assigned to the assignee of the present application and having attorney docket number 14917.1301US01/MS327294.01, is hereby incorporated by reference. Related U.S. patent application Ser. No. ______, filed on even date herewith entitled “Best-Bet Recommendations,” assigned to the assignee of the present application and having attorney docket number 14917.1303US01/MS327295.01, is hereby incorporated by reference. Related U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/492,675, filed on Jun. 26, 2009 entitled “Batched Transfer of Arbitrarily Distributed Data,” assigned to the assignee of the present application and having attorney docket number 14917.1304US01/MS327296.01, is hereby incorporated by reference. Related U.S. patent application Ser. No. ______, filed on even date herewith entitled “Dynamic Information Hierarchies,” assigned to the assignee of the present application and having attorney docket number 14917.1305US01/MS327316.01, is hereby incorporated by reference. Related U.S. patent application Ser. No. ______, filed on even date herewith entitled “Load-Balancing and Scaling for Analytics Data,” assigned to the assignee of the present application and having attorney docket number 14917.1306US01/MS327318.01, is hereby incorporated by reference.
