Links to commercial web sites as a source of business information

摘要

A study of hyperlinks on commercial Web sites was carried out to fill a gap in Webometrics research in this area. Websites of China's top 100 information technology (IT) companies were examined. The link count to a company's Web site 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. Ibis 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.