Patent ID: 7730120

Claim:
A method of processing data at a host computer, comprising: receiving a data file containing records of a plurality of HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) transactions of a plurality of users, each of the HTTP transactions including at least one URL (Uniform Resource Locator); converting the data file into a common file format; cleansing the data file in the common file format by applying a plurality of URL rules to remove session identifiers while accounting for the use of proxies, thereby producing a cleansed data file containing at least one modified URL; performing a panel selection process, comprising: conducting a periodic survey of a subset of Internet users to determine characteristics of an Internet community that includes the subset of Internet users, the characteristics including demographic characteristics; selecting a panel of users from the subset of Internet users, the panel of users having a targeted combination of the demographic characteristics; retaining the data file only when it contains a user identifier of a user in the panel of users; using a computer, performing a transformation process, comprising: removing from the data file those URLs that do not contain the user identifier; determining which URLs in the data file belong to a session of the user in the panel of users; assigning a session identifier to the session; creating a plurality of session data files, each of which contain the user identifier, a time stamp, the URLs in the data file that belong to the session, and the session identifier; decomposing the URLs in each of the plurality of session data files so that the URLs in each of the plurality of session data files are decomposed URLs; and hashing the decomposed URLs so that the decomposed URLs are hashed, decomposed URLs; calculating a metric of user behavior based upon the hashed, decomposed URLs; merging the metric of user behavior into a file containing a plurality of metrics of user behavior; and transmitting to a remote machine the file containing the plurality of metrics of user behavior, wherein the metric of user behavior is a consumer preferred order of viewing a good or service type.