Patent attributes
To allow for detection of links to spam within a social networking system by identifying entities based on uniform resource locators (URLs). Identifiers that include at least one parent entity identifier representing a parent entity and at least one child entity identifier representing a child entity are extracted from URLs. An identifier sequence including the at least one parent entity identifier is designated as an attributable sequence when the child entity accounts for a value of traffic received by the parent entity that does not satisfy a threshold. In an embodiment, the child entity may be identified as an actionable target. The URLs may be classified within a hierarchical structure based on the identifiers. The hierarchical structure may comprise at least one parent node representing the parent entity and at least one child node representing the child entity. The hierarchical structure may be a tree.