Patent ID: 8892459

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for identifying an affiliate ID associated with an advertisement for an e-commerce merchant website, the advertisement comprising a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) referring to a target resource that is not part of the e-commerce merchant website, the method comprising: determining, by the computer, that the URI does not include an affiliate ID; and consequently determining whether said affiliate ID has been hidden by a rogue affiliate by analyzing, by the computer, a redirect chain corresponding to the target resource by iteratively performing a resource-processing sub-method comprising steps i-vi until said affiliate ID is identified: i) comparing the URI to some or all of a plurality of patterns corresponding to a respective plurality of trusted URIs referring to trusted resources provided by at least one of a trusted affiliate network, a trusted advertising-management service, a trusted advertisement-tracking service, and the e-commerce merchant; and determining that said target resource is a known-trusted resource when the URI matches at least one of said plurality of patterns; ii) selecting a request method from a group comprising a trusted-resource request method and a non-trusted-resource request method, said request method being selected from said group according to whether said target resource is determined to be a known-trusted resource; iii) requesting the target resource according to said selected request method; iv) receiving a response corresponding to the requested target resource; v) determining whether said response indicates a redirect to a redirect URI; and vi) when said response indicates said redirect to said redirect URI, repeating at least steps i-vi to process said redirect URI unless said redirect URI includes said affiliate ID, in which case, associating said affiliate ID with the advertisement in an affiliate-tracking database.