Patent ID: 7146415

Claim:
An information source monitor device for use in monitoring access of a specific client computer to an unspecified number of server computers in a network, the server computers having data files having a hyperlink structure, the specific client computer browsing the data files, and the network interconnecting the server computers and the specific client computer, the information source monitor device comprising: extracting means for extracting a referring URL (Uniform Resource Locator) from a request header for a data file wherein the referring URL is of a higher hierarchal level than is a URL of a referred-to hyperlinked page of the request header, the request header outputted to the network from the specific client computer; reference information storing means for storing the thus extracted referring URL of the higher hierarchal level as reference information; counting means for counting the reference information to obtain a total number of times references made for each referring URL so that the number of references by the URL of the higher hierarchal level is counted and the number of times that a particular URL is used as a referrer to refer a client to other data file(s)/site(s) is counted; and output means for outputting a result of the counting to the specific client computer.