| 摘要 |
The invention relates to methods and apparatus for accumulating information about the resource access habits of a user. A preferred embodiment of the method uses tracer files or objects located on webpages. When a user requests the webpage resource, the image files are cached by the users browser. The images are arranged within the website hierarchy with specified latencies (expiry periods) and locations. Thus, in one embodiment, by tracking the GET requests, the contents of the users cache can be analyzed for the existence of the cached image files which betray the users movements through the website hierarchy. This data can be statistically analyzed to determine the browsing habits of the user. This information can be used to modify the content which is offered to the user on subsequent visits to the website resource. The information can also be used to provide data relating to the performance of the network as well as an indication of the access rates of various network resources. This data can be used to optimize the performance of the network.
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