Patent ID: 8918495

Claim:
An apparatus for tracking incoming link access in a processing system, the apparatus comprising: a parser operative to separate a destination universal resource locator (URL) and a first set of tracking information from an incoming access request; a URL modifier operative to: receive the destination URL and the first set of tracking information from the parser; provide a second set of tracking information to a business warehouse coupled to the URL modifier; and generate a target URL based on the first set of tracking information and the second set of tracking information; a tracking database coupled to the URL modifier, operative to receive the first set of tracking information therefrom to update the tracking database based on the first set of tracking information; and a redirector receiving the generated target URL from the URL modifier, wherein the redirector provides an access request for the target URL to be transmitted to a user, the processing of the access request resulting in pushing data from the target URL to the user; wherein the first set of tracking information includes an identifier for the accessed target URL and an identifier for at least one category of the tracking database, each of the at least one category representing related interests in the data pushed from the target URL; and wherein upon receiving the first set of tracking information, an entry corresponding to the target URL and an entry corresponding to the at least one category of the tracking database are updated to reflect the target URL being accessed.