Patent ID: 7797197

Claim:
A method of analyzing the performance of affiliate sites that refer users to an electronic commerce site that hosts an electronic catalog of items that are available for purchase, the method comprising: by a computer system comprising one or more computers: storing transaction data descriptive of purchases made by users referred to the electronic commerce site by a plurality of affiliate sites, said transaction data reflective of item-specific links provided on the affiliate sites, each item-specific link being specific to a particular item represented in the electronic catalog of the electronic commerce site, said item-specific links being selectable by users to access corresponding item descriptions in the electronic catalog; applying an association-rule mining algorithm to the transaction data to generate a set of association rules, said association rules identifying items that tend to be purchased in combination by said users; analyzing performance of a particular affiliate site by using the association rules, in combination with transaction data associated with the particular affiliate site, to identify one or more disparities between expected and actual quantities of specific items purchased by users referred by the particular affiliate site; and generating, for presentation to an operator of the affiliate site, a recommendation of at least one item for which to provide an item-specific link on the affiliate site to improve the performance of the affiliate site, said at least one item identified based on the one or more identified disparities.