Abstract: The current document is directed to a query-as-a-service system (“QAAS system”) that collects enormous volumes of data from network-connected entities, referred to as “Things” in the phrase “Internet of Things,” persistently stores the collected data and provides a distributed-query-execution engine that allows remote clients to continuously execute queries against the collected data. In a described implementation, both the raw data and query results are persistently stored in the QAAS system, with the raw data stored for significantly longer periods of time. Query results generated by the query-processing engine are securely transmitted to QAAS remote clients for distribution to file systems, storage appliances, applications, and other data sinks within client systems.

Abstract: The current document is directed to methods and systems for testing web sites. In certain implementations of the methods and systems, a testing service collects customer page-access and conversion information on behalf of a web site. The testing service is straightforwardly accessed and configured, through a web-site-based user interface, and is virtually incorporated into the web site by simple HTML-file modifications. A more efficient web-site-testing system nonuniformly distributes web-site accesses among web-page variants in order to more quickly and computationally efficiently determine a most effective web-page variant among a set of tested web-page variants. In certain implementations, nonuniform distribution of web-site accesses among web-page variants is facilitated by a Bayesian-inference method.

Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention provide tools and facilities for instrumentation of application programs, including application programs that execute on mobile-electronics devices, including web browsers. The application-program and mobile-electronics-device environment is a superset of the web-analytics problem domain and provides many new opportunities and challenges for instrumentation-based data collection and data analysis. Certain embodiments of the present invention provide configuration-controlled embedded instrumentation that allows fine-granularity control of instrumentation operation by remote data-collection servers.

Abstract: The current document is directed to automated electronic testing, optimization, and/or analysis systems that perform testing that results in non-binomial experimental results that are processed by using efficient and robust processing methods. In one implementation, efficient and robust processing methods are employed to process non-binomial results produced from single-factor tests. In a second implementation, robust and computationally efficient processing methods are employed to analyze non-binomial results from multi-factor/multi-level tests.

Abstract: The current document is directed to automated electronic testing, optimization, and/or analysis systems that collect sufficient data from instrumentation, maintain sufficient user status, and provide sufficient communications between instrumentation and testing, optimization, and/or analysis systems in order to follow, reconstruct, and record temporal threads of user activity that span multiple user contexts. In one implementation, JSON-encoded information is collected through instrumentation and supplemented by testing, optimization, and/or analysis systems in order to provide many different types of information about remote-information-accessing users and the device and program contexts from which they access remote information.

Abstract: The current application is directed to methods and systems for designing and configuring web-site testing and analysis. In certain implementations, a testing service collects customer page-access and conversion information on behalf of a web site. The testing service is straightforwardly accessed and configured, through a web-site-based graphical user interface, and is virtually incorporated into the web site.

Abstract: The current document is directed to methods and systems that receive instrumentation-generated events and that employ statistical inference to discover event topics and to assign a topic or category to each of a number of events. In a described implementation, the events comprise key/value pairs. A seeded local/global-topic latent Dirichlet allocation methods is used to discover topics and assign topics to a set of events. The topic-assigned events are then processed to generate topic signatures, using which the methods and systems assign topics to subsequently received messages.

Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention are directed to methods and systems for testing web sites and web servers. In discussed embodiments of the present invention, a third-party testing service collects page-access and conversion information on behalf of a web site. The third-party testing service is straightforwardly configured through a user interface and is engaged for real-time, live statistics collection by means of simple modifications of HTML files served or provided to users by a web site.

Abstract: The current document is directed to automated market-segment-discovery methods and systems that may be incorporated within, or used in combination with, various types of analysis and optimization automated systems for automated discovery of market segments for subsequent use in targeted marketing and information distribution. In one implementation, a log of visitor records collected by an analysis and/or optimization system is processed to generate a segment-discovery tree. Construction of the segment-discovery tree produces a set of candidate market-segment-defining rules. Various different techniques and metrics can be applied to produce a set of market-segment-defining rules from these candidate rules. The market-segment-defining rules can then be exported to marketing systems or subsystems to facilitate targeted marketing and information distribution.

Abstract: Certain embodiments of the present invention are directed to test-duration estimation. A time needed to run an automated web-page test, or the remaining time needed to complete the automated web-page test, is estimated by estimating a sample size needed to ensure that observed differences in conversion rates are attributable, with a specified statistical significance, to selecting particular factor levels for particular factors that are varied during the automated testing. The estimated sample size is then divided by an average web-page access rate to obtain the remaining testing time to achieve a specified significance level.

Abstract: A method for constructing a customized web analytics application comprises providing a base analytics code, including a base data mining code and a plurality of tokens corresponding to unincorporated code snippets, and incorporating code snippets as selected to create the application where each code snippet is configured to track a different custom web analytic. The system displays a selection of at least one web analytic to track and receives user selection of at least one displayed web analytic to track over a wide area network. Once selected, an unincorporated code snippet corresponding to each selected displayed web analytic is retrieved from a library of such code snippets. The code snippet is then substituted in place of its corresponding token within the base analytics code to create a customized analytics code. The customized code is finalized by removing the remaining tokens and the finalized code transmitted to the user for incorporation into their web pages.

Abstract: The current document is directed to automated electronic testing, optimization, and/or analysis systems that collect sufficient data from instrumentation, maintain sufficient user status, and provide sufficient communications between instrumentation and testing, optimization, and/or analysis systems in order to follow, reconstruct, and record temporal threads of user activity that span multiple user contexts. In one implementation, JSON-encoded information is collected through instrumentation and supplemented by testing, optimization, and/or analysis systems in order to provide many different types of information about remote-information-accessing users and the device and program contexts from which they access remote information.

Abstract: Web traffic reporting methods that rely upon third-party cookies suffer in accuracy when those tracking cookies are frequently refused by web users or deleted once they have been accepted. The invention described herein circumvents this problem by employing first-party cookies instead. This is accomplished by a client-side script that maintains the first-party cookie (as placed by the web site in question) and sends a site-maintained visitor ID to a tracking service for analysis. The effect is to improve the accuracy of traffic statistics that rely on that cookie.

Abstract: The current document is directed to automated electronic testing, optimization, and/or analysis systems that perform testing that results in non-binomial experimental results that are processed by using efficient and robust processing methods. In one implementation, efficient and robust processing methods are employed to process non-binomial results produced from single-factor tests. In a second implementation, robust and computationally efficient processing methods are employed to analyze non-binomial results from multi-factor/multi-level tests.

Abstract: A method for constructing a customized web analytics application comprises providing a base analytics code, including a base data mining code and a plurality of tokens corresponding to unincorporated code snippets, and incorporating code snippets as selected to create the application where each code snippet is configured to track a different custom web analytic. The system displays a selection of at least one web analytic to track and receives user selection of at least one displayed web analytic to track over a wide area network. Once selected, an unincorporated code snippet corresponding to each selected displayed web analytic is retrieved from a library of such code snippets. The code snippet is then substituted in place of its corresponding token within the base analytics code to create a customized analytics code. The customized code is finalized by removing the remaining tokens and the finalized code transmitted to the user for incorporation into their web pages.

Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention are directed to methods and systems for testing web sites and web servers. In discussed embodiments of the present invention, a third-party testing service collects page-access and conversion information on behalf of a web site. The third-party testing service is straightforwardly configured through a user interface and is engaged for real-time, live statistics collection by means of simple modifications of HTML files served or provided to users by a web site.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for tracking and reporting traffic activity on a web site whereby cookie data is compiled at the visitor computer using cookie processing script embedded within the web page downloaded over the Internet and operable on the visitor computer. Data mining code within the downloaded web page is operable on the visitor computer to obtain web browsing data. The cookie processing script operates in consideration of this web browsing data and an old cookie previously stored on the visitor computer and associated with the visited web page to obtain new cookie values. These new cookie values are then stored on the visitor computer and also attached to an image request sent to a data collection server where they are processed and posted for viewing by the web page owner. As cookie processing and writing occurs completely within the visitor computer, cookie-blocking technologies are circumvented.

Abstract: The current document is directed to systems and methods that stream real-time, processed data from remote processor-controlled user appliances, including personal computers, tablets, mobile phones, and laptops, to application programs for display, analysis, and other purposes and to other data-consuming devices and systems. In one implementation, a real-time processed-data streaming system includes instrumentation within remote, processor-controlled user devices, data collection at geographically distributed data-collection centers, consolidation of event messages generated by the geographically distributed data-collection centers within consolidation systems, processing of the consolidated event messages within one or more processing centers, and streaming of processed data, in the form of various types of processed-data-containing messages, to consumers of the data, including application programs that render the data for display on electronic display devices.

Abstract: The current application is directed to methods and systems that accumulate data with respect to the time behavior of posts related to one or more pages of an individual or organization within a social network and generate one or more models that characterize the time behavior of posts within the social network. These models, or heuristics based on these models, can be used to estimate characteristics and parameters of the time behaviors of individual posts prior to posting or at various times following posting of the posts to social-network pages.

Abstract: Different web pages on a web server are associated with different qualification profiles, each of which is assigned a value by the web-site proprietor. Traffic data hits at the web-site are analyzed to determine which web pages the visitor viewed on the web server. Each qualifying visitor is thereafter associated with a qualification profile and a corresponding value. In another aspect of the invention, visitors arriving as a result of an advertisement on a remote web-site are tracked. The web-site proprietor is consequently able to determine a return on advertising investment based on the value of visitors brought to the site by the tracked advertisement.