AFFILIATE MARKETING SEARCH FACILITY FOR RANKING MERCHANTS AND RECORDING REFERRAL COMMISSIONS TO AFFILIATE SITES BASED UPON USERS' ON-LINE ACTIVITY

摘要

Providing a search facility to a consumer that may be accessed by the consumer through a participating affiliate marketing web site. The search facility conducts searches of databases that include both merchants that pay a cost-per-action commission to the search facility based upon actual sales to consumers introduced to the merchant by the search facility, and merchants that pay a cost-per-click commission based upon the number of accesses of the merchant's site from the search facility. The search facility ranks the merchants for display in search results based upon the commissions paid and possibly other factors. The search facility also tracks sales-based commissions and can pay other types of commissions based upon or in proportion to the sales based commissions.