Patent ID: 8189750

Claim:
A method for tracking call activity of a plurality of businesses, comprising the steps of: deriving a business-specific pool of tracking telephone numbers from a global pool of tracking telephone numbers associated with the plurality of businesses, the business-specific pool being associated with one business of the plurality of businesses; receiving an indication that a consumer has viewed a Web site associated with the one business; searching for at least one tracking telephone number associated with the one business in the business-specific pool, the at least one tracking telephone number having an expiration date; when the at least one tracking telephone number that has an expiration date that has passed has been found: sending the at least one tracking telephone number to the Web site; and when the at least one tracking telephone number that has an expiration date that has passed has not been found: determining if the maximum number of allowed tracking telephone numbers in the business-specific pool for the one business has been exceeded; when the maximum number of allowed tracking telephone numbers in the business-specific pool for the one business has not been exceeded: showing a fallback tracking telephone number to the consumer; and when the maximum number of allowed tracking telephone numbers in the business-specific pool for the one business has been exceeded: searching for an unallocated tracking telephone number in the global pool of tracking telephone numbers; when there are no unallocated tracking telephone numbers in the global pool of tracking telephone numbers: showing a fallback tracking telephone number to the consumer; and when there are unallocated tracking telephone numbers in the global pool of tracking telephone numbers: inserting a new tracking telephone number to the business-specific pool of tracking telephone numbers for the one business from the global pool; associating the consumer with the new tracking telephone number; assigning a new expiration date to the new tracking telephone number; and sending the new tracking telephone number to the Web site.