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Why are hyperlinks to business Websites created? A content analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Liwen Vaughan

    (Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario)

  • Yijun Gao

    (Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario)

  • Margaret Kipp

    (Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario)

Abstract

Summary Motivations for the creation of hyperlinks to business sites were analyzed through a content analysis approach. Links to 280 North American IT companies (71 Canadian companies and 209 U.S. companies) were searched through Yahoo!. Then a random sample of 808 links was taken from the links retrieved. The content as well as the context of each link was manually examined to determine why the link was created. The country location and the type of the site where the link came from were also identified. The study found that most links were created for business purposes confirming findings from early quantitative studies that links contain useful business information. Links to competitors were extremely rare but competitors were often co-linked, suggesting that co-link analysis is the direction to pursue for information on competitive intelligence.

Suggested Citation

  • Liwen Vaughan & Yijun Gao & Margaret Kipp, 2006. "Why are hyperlinks to business Websites created? A content analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 67(2), pages 291-300, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:67:y:2006:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-006-0100-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-006-0100-6
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Judit Bar-Ilan & Rina Azoulay, 2012. "Map of nonprofit organization websites in Israel," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(6), pages 1142-1167, June.
    2. Abbasiharofteh, Milad & Kinne, Jan & Krüger, Miriam, 2021. "The strength of weak and strong ties in bridging geographic and cognitive distances," ZEW Discussion Papers 21-049, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    3. Enrique Orduna-Malea & Selenay Aytac, 2015. "Revealing the online network between university and industry: the case of Turkey," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 105(3), pages 1849-1866, December.
    4. Liwen Vaughan & Margaret E. I. Kipp & Yijun Gao, 2007. "Why are Websites co-linked? The case of Canadian universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 72(1), pages 81-92, July.
    5. Tranos, Emmanouil & Incera, Andre Carrascal & Willis, George, 2022. "Using the web to predict regional trade flows: data extraction, modelling, and validation," OSF Preprints 9bu5z, Center for Open Science.
    6. Gautam Pant & Olivia R. L. Sheng, 2015. "Web Footprints of Firms: Using Online Isomorphism for Competitor Identification," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 26(1), pages 188-209, March.
    7. Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2008. "Informetrics at the beginning of the 21st century—A review," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-52.
    8. Junwei Ma & Jianhua Wang & Philip Szmedra, 2019. "Sustainable Competitive Position of Mobile Communication Companies: Comprehensive Perspectives of Insiders and Outsiders," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-15, April.
    9. Kim Holmberg, 2010. "Co-inlinking to a municipal Web space: a webometric and content analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 83(3), pages 851-862, June.

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