Links to commercial websites as a source of business information

Authors

L. Vaughan, Vaughan, L.; Fac. of Info. and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, London, Ont. N6A 5B7, Canada; email: lvaughan@uwo.caFollow
G. Wu

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

1-1-2004

Volume

60

Journal

Scientometrics

First Page

487

URL with Digital Object Identifier

https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SCIE.0000034389.14825.bc

Last Page

496

Abstract

Websites of China's top 100 information technology (IT) companies were examined. Link count to a company's website was found to correlate with the company's revenue, profit, and research and development expenses. This suggests that Web hyperlinks to commercial sites can be a business performance indicator and thus a source of business information. This information is useful for Web business intelligence and Web data mining. As a comparison to IT companies, China's top 100 privately owned companies were also studied. No relationship between link count and the business performance measure was found for these companies due probably to the heterogeneous nature of this group. Data collection issues for webometrics research were also explored in the study.