New Tech Report: "How Web 1.0 Fails: The Mismatch Between Hyperlinks and Clickstreams"
Title
How Web 1.0 Fails: The Mismatch Between Hyperlinks and Clickstreams
Authors
Lingfei Wu
City University of Hong Kong
Robert Ackland
The Australian National University
Source
arXiv
Abstract
The core of the Web is a hyperlink navigation system collaboratively set up by web- masters to help users find desired websites. But does this system really work as expected? We show that the answer seems to be negative: there is a substantial mismatch between hyperlinks and the pathways that users actually take. A closer look at empirical surfing activities reveals the reason of the mismatch: webmasters try to build a global virtual world without geographical or cultural boundaries, but users in fact prefer to navigate within more fragmented, language-based groups of websites. We call this type of behavior “preferential navigation” and find that it is driven by “local” search engines.
Direct to Full Text (12 Pages; PDF)
Note: When we downloaded this afternoon pages 11-12 were not included in the PDF.
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About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.