Patent ID: 7649838

Claim:
A method of determining a quality ranking of user traffic directed from at least one traffic producer Web site to a plurality of traffic consumer Web sites, comprising the steps of: a) establishing a plurality of references for the plurality of traffic consumers on the at least one Web site of the traffic producer, the plurality of references each including a link from the traffic producer to a traffic quality intermediary and a unique identifier to identify a respective traffic consumer from other traffic consumers of the plurality of traffic consumers; b) receiving, at the traffic quality intermediary, user traffic data associated with the user traffic directed from the traffic producer; c) directing, using a respective link, the user traffic through the traffic quality intermediary from the at least one traffic producer Web site to one or more of the plurality of traffic consumer Web sites; d) determining, at the traffic quality intermediary, a quality ranking of the user traffic of each of the traffic consumers based upon the user traffic data received by the traffic quality intermediary and the unique identifier of the respective traffic consumer comprising the steps of: i) comparing each of a plurality of traffic data parameters of the user traffic data against a baseline group, the baseline group comprising a respective baseline for each of the plurality of traffic data parameters of the user, ii) determining a deviation for each of the plurality of traffic data parameters of the user traffic data based on the comparison, iii) weighting the deviation for each of the plurality of traffic data parameters of the user with a predetermined weight assigned to each of the plurality of traffic data parameters of the user, and iv) combining each of the weighted deviations to arrive at the traffic quality ranking of the respective traffic consumer; and e) reporting the quality ranking of the respective traffic consumer.