Patent ID: 8224715

Claim:
A method of analyzing the performance of affiliate sites that refer users to an electronic commerce site, the method comprising: generating, for each of a plurality of categories of affiliate sites, a respective set of item association data that identifies items that are purchased in combination relatively frequently by users referred by affiliate sites falling within the respective category; and analyzing performance of a particular affiliate site that falls within a first category of said plurality of categories by comparing the set of item association data for said first category to transaction data associated with the particular affiliate site, wherein the particular affiliate site comprises a plurality of item-specific links to the electronic commerce site, each item-specific link corresponding to a respective item represented in an electronic catalog of the electronic commerce site, and wherein analyzing the performance of the particular affiliate site comprises using the transaction data, in combination with the set of item association data for said first category, to generate a recommendation of at least one additional item-specific link to provide on the particular affiliate site to improve performance; said method performed by a computer system that comprises one or more computers.