Patent ID: 8825849

Claim:
A distributed data collection system, comprising: a plurality of data collection nodes comprising a first collection node and a second collection node, wherein the first collection node is configured for collecting first tracking data indicative of at least one client machine accessing a web site during a first time period and the second collection node is configured for collecting second tracking data indicative of the at least one client machine accessing the web site during a second time period, wherein the first tracking data comprises a first request for a single pixel image and the second tracking data comprises a second request for the single pixel image; a domain name server configured for receiving the first and second requests from the at least one client machine and resolving the first and second requests to respective first and second network addresses for the first and second collection nodes, wherein the domain name server comprises a processor that is configured for: routing the first tracking data to the first collection node based on the first collection node being more responsive to the at least one client machine than the second collection node during the first time period, and routing the second tracking data to the second collection node based on the second collection node being more responsive to the at least one client machine than the first collection node during the second time period; a master processing center configured for receiving collected data from the first and second collection nodes and for aggregating the received data into the website usage data describing the at least one client machine'access to the web site.