Method and computer medium for organising URLs for affiliate referrals
A method of organizing a URL string and a computer readable medium encoding the referral of a visitor to a merchant website by an affiliate having a presence on the merchant website comprising attaching a token to the URL string of the merchant website, the token capable of being combined with an affiliate identifier to form a mnemonic representation of the affiliate's presence on the merchant website and comprised of at least one character not have an established meaning when used as a part of the URL string and distinct from the affiliate identifier. The tokens are selected from the group consisting of “*” and “!”.
1 . A method of organizing a URL string encoding the referral of a visitor to a merchant website by an affiliate having a presence on the merchant website comprising:
attaching a token to the URL string of the merchant website, the token capable of being combined with an affiliate identifier to form a mnemonic representation of the affiliate's presence on the merchant website and comprised of at least one character not have an established meaning when used as a part of the URL string and distinct from the affiliate identifier.
2 . The method of claim 1 wherein said token is located anywhere in the host, the location of the resource or the query-string of the URL.
3 . The method of claim 1 including selecting said token from the group consisting of “*” and “!”.
4 . The method of claim 1 wherein the token is comprised of at least one “*” character.
5 . The method of claim 1 wherein said token is comprised of at least one “!” character.
6 . The method of claim 1 wherein the mnemonic representation of the affiliate's presence on the merchant website forms a name.
7 . The method of claim 1 wherein the mnemonic representation of the affiliate's presence on the merchant website forms a word.”.
8 . A computer readable medium having computer executable instructions thereon for organizing a URL string encoding the referral of a visitor to a merchant website by an affiliate having a presence on the merchant website, the method comprising:
attaching a token to the URL string of the merchant website, the token capable of being combined with an affiliate identifier to form a mnemonic representation of the affiliate's presence on the merchant website and comprised of at least one character not have an established meaning when used as a part of the URL string and distinct from the affiliate identifier.
9 . The computer readable medium of claim 8 wherein said token is located anywhere in the host, the location of the resource or the query-string of the URL.
10 . The computer readable medium of claim 8 including selecting said token from the group consisting of “*” and “!”.
11 . The computer readable medium of claim 8 wherein said token is comprised of at least one “*” character.
12 . The computer readable medium of claim 8 wherein said token is comprised of at least one “!” character.
13 . The computer readable medium of claim 8 wherein the mnemonic representation of the affiliate's presence on the merchant website forms a name.
14 . The computer readable medium of claim 8 wherein the mnemonic representation of the affiliate's presence on the merchant website forms a name.
15 . A method of designating a visit to a merchant website, comprising:
receiving an indication that a visitor is accessing a merchant website using a URL string wherein the merchant website includes an identifier of an affiliate having a presence on the website;
identifying a presence of a toke in the URL string; and
based on the presence of the token, designating the visit as a referral to the merchant website from the affiliate;
wherein the token comprises a character or sequence of characters which do not have an established meaning when used in a URL and which are distinct from an affiliate identifier.
16 . The method of claim 15 , wherein an affiliate having a presence on the website.
17 . The method of claim 15 further including compensating the affiliate for the referral.
18 . The method of claim 15 including designating the referral as being from an affiliate having a presence on the website.
19 . The method of claim 15 wherein the referral is used to track referrals to the merchant website.