Patent ID: 8301754

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving, at a client device and from a publisher server, web page content instructions to cause the client device to render a web page and request traffic statistics instructions from a statistics server that is different from the publisher server; rendering, at the client device, the web page using the web page content instructions received from the publisher server; identifying, at the client device and using the traffic statistics instructions received from the statistics server, traffic content items in the web page, each of the traffic content items being a content item displayed on the web page that facilitates navigation from the web page or that facilitates interaction with the web page; issuing, from the client device and using the traffic statistics instructions received from the statistics server, a request for traffic statistics data related to one or more of navigations through the traffic content items or visitor interactions with the traffic content items; receiving, at the client device, the traffic statistics data related to the navigations through the traffic content items or the visitor interactions with the traffic content items; generating overlay data at the client device, the overlay data including the traffic statistics data formatted and to appear, upon subsequent display, as adjacent to the traffic content items to which the traffic statistics data are related; applying the generated overlay data to the web page, including rendering the generated overlay data subsequent to the rendering of the web page such that the generated overlay data display the traffic statistics data adjacent to the traffic content items to which the traffic statistics data are related; and preserving an appearance of the rendered web page underlying the overlay data while applying the generated overlay data to the web page.