1. A method for storing fingerprints for multimedia streams, the method comprising the following operations performed with one or more processors: identifying a multimedia stream associated with a link, the multimedia stream comprising content and metadata that describes content; removing the metadata from the stream and encoding the content using a compression algorithm to generate a fingerprint for the multimedia stream, the fingerprint comprising a set of unique bits; comparing the generated fingerprint to at least one fingerprint stored in a fingerprint database; determining, based on the comparison, whether the generated fingerprint matches at least one fingerprint stored in the fingerprint database; storing the generated fingerprint in the fingerprint database when it is determined that there is not a match to the generated fingerprint; creating a canonical resource locator for the identified multimedia stream by resolving the link and at least one other link into a simplified format; and associating the canonical resource locator with the generated fingerprint.
2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: increasing a canonical resource locator counter associated with the fingerprint.