How it Works

The Meteor platform is built around patent-pending technology that uses tracking scripts to monitor the "pass-along" of content from one person to another via links on web pages, bookmarks, email messages, instant messenger and mobile devices. As tracked content is shared between friends, on blogs, and within communities, Meteor Tracker generates a sharing graph that identifies each "node" (unique visitor) within the graph and captures every site visit generated through each individual source.

So How does our code work?

Meteor tracks word-of-mouth activity by appending a short string of characters to the end of any site URL. Installation is as simple as pasting a couple lines of code into the header of your site.

Once Meteor is installed, each visitor to your site is assigned a unique URL ID. Then, when visitors share your page with their friends - whether through email, IM or on the web - we're able to see where they share it by tracking the visits to their URL ID.

What's a typical deployment look like?

The graphic below illustrates the typical structure of a Meteor deployment for an advertising campaign or promotion. Meteor is installed on a landing page and provides insight into where visitors find out about the site, how often visitors share the site, and how many of those visitors take a conversion action (registering for a newsletter, pre-ordering a game, downloading a demo, etc.)

This is just an example of how Meteor is often deployed on advertiser sites. Meteor is fully customizable to suit the needs of a particular site or campaign.

Technology Overview

The Meteor platform is a data-driven web service built upon open-source software and commodity hardware. At its core, the system consists of a lightweight tracking service, a data gathering infrastructure, and a web UI featuring detailed anaytics built in Python.

Meteor Tracker runs when high-performance Javascript is executed on a Web page where it has been deployed. Using Javascript, cookies and asynchronous server requests, the Meteor Tracker creates unique URL identifiers for each site visitors, builds parent-child relationships between visitors, collects additional data and summarizes it for presentation in the web UI analytics.

The web UI features site management functionality and the Meteor Tracker Dashboard. The Meteor Tracker dashboard provides an innovative, unique way to explore the effect of online word-of-mouth on web sites. Using results from our distributed, real-time data engine, users can analyze the real effect of various sources of web traffic and adjust their online advertising strategies accordingly.