Examining the robustness of web co‐link analysis

Vaughan, Liwen; Tang, Juan; Du, Jian

doi:10.1108/14684520911001936

Cited by 11 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 13 publications

(12 reference statements)

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“…In contrast to the very limited amount of literature on link analysis of social media, there have been so many studies on hyperlinks in the general web that it is fair to say that link analysis forms the largest part of the webometrics literature so far. These studies have covered various sectors of society, including education (e.g., Bar‐Ilan, ; Ortega & Aguillo, ), business (e.g., Romero‐Frías, ; Vaughan, Tang, & Du, ), politics (e.g., Kim, Barnett, & Park, , Romero‐Frías & Vaughan, ), and government (e.g., Holmberg, ). Books (e.g., Thelwall, ) and PhD theses (e.g., Björneborn, ) on link analysis have been published.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncovering information from social media hyperlinks: An investigation of twitter

Vaughan

2015

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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Analyzing hyperlink patterns has been a major research topic since the early days of the web. Numerous studies reported uncovering rich information and methodological advances. However, very few studies thus far examined hyperlinks in the rapidly developing sphere of social media. This paper reports a study that helps fill this gap. The study analyzed links originating from tweets to the websites of 3 types of organizations (government, education, and business). Data were collected over an 8‐month period to observe the fluctuation and reliability of the individual data set. Hyperlink data from the general web (not social media sites) were also collected and compared with social media data. The study found that the 2 types of hyperlink data correlated significantly and that analyzing the 2 together can help organizations see their relative strength or weakness in the two platforms. The study also found that both types of inlink data correlated with offline measures of organizations' performance. Twitter data from a relatively short period were fairly reliable in estimating performance measures. The timelier nature of social media data as well as the date/time stamps on tweets make this type of data potentially more valuable than that from the general web.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncovering information from social media hyperlinks: An investigation of twitter

Vaughan

2015

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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“…Complex indicators such as co-links (Vaughan, Tang, & Du, 2009) and co-words (Vaughan, Yang, & Tang, 2012) were developed in parallel, providing useful tools to analyze online relationships. Advanced methods (such as the combination of co-links and keywords) were also introduced in order to examine products or services (Vaughan, & Yu, 2008;.…”

Section: Related Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disclosing the network structure of private companies on the web

Orduña-Malea

López-Cózar

Serrano-Cobos

et al. 2015

Online Information Review

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Purpose -It is common for an international company to have different brands, products or services, information for investors, a corporate blog, affiliates, branches in different countries, etc. If all these contents appear as independent additional web domains (AWDs), the company should be represented on the web by all these web domains, since many of these AWDs may acquire remarkable performance that could mask or distort the real web performance of the company, affecting therefore on the understanding of web metrics. The purpose of this paper is to determine the amount, type, web impact and topology of the AWDs in commercial companies in order to get a better understanding on their complete web impact and structure. Design/methodology/approach -The set of companies belonging to the Spanish IBEX-35 stock index has been analysed as testing bench. The authors proceeded to identify and categorise all AWDs belonging to these companies, and to apply both web impact (web presence and visibility) and network metrics. Findings -The results show that AWDs get a high web presence but relatively low web visibility, due to certain opacity or less dissemination of some AWDs favoring its isolation. This is verified by the low network density values obtained, that occur because AWDs are strongly connected with the corporate domain (although asymmetrically), but very weakly linked each other.Research limitations/implications -The categories used to classify the various AWD, although they are clearly distinguishable conceptually, have certain limitations in practice, since they depend on the form adopted by companies to publish certain content or to provide certain services or products. Otherwise, the use of web indicators presents certain problems of accuracy that could be softened if applied with caution and in a relational basis. Originality/value -Although the processes of AWDs creation and categorisation are complex (web policy seems not to be driven by a defined or conscious plan), their influence on the web performance of IBEX 35 companies is meaningful. This research measures the AWDs influence on companies under webometric terms for the first time.

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“…A useful method for studying commercial websites based on links is colink analysis (Romero‐Frías & Vaughan, , ; Vaughan, , Vaughan & You, , , Vaughan, Tang, & Du, ) because usually there are only a few direct links between websites of competing companies.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Map of nonprofit organization websites in Israel

Bar‐Ilan

Azoulay

2012

J Am Soc Inf Sci Tec

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In this study, we consider the structure and linking strategy of Hebrew websites of several nonprofit organizations. Because nonprofit organizations differ from commercial, educational, or governmental sectors, it is important to understand the ways they utilize the web. To the best of our knowledge, the linking structure of nonprofit organizations has not been previously studied. We surveyed websites of 54 nonprofit organizations in Israel; most of these sites have at least 100 volunteers. We compared their orientation and contents and we built their linking map. We divided the organizations into four main groups: economic aid and citizen rights organizations, health aid organizations, organizations supporting families and individuals with special needs, and organizations for women and children. We found that the number of links inside the special needs group is much higher than in the other groups. We tried to explain this behavior by considering the data obtained from the site‐linking graph. The value of our results is in defining and testing a method to investigate a group of nonprofit organizations, using a case study of Israeli organizations.

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Examining the robustness of web co‐link analysis

Cited by 11 publications

References 13 publications

Uncovering information from social media hyperlinks: An investigation of twitter

Uncovering information from social media hyperlinks: An investigation of twitter

Disclosing the network structure of private companies on the web

Map of nonprofit organization websites in Israel

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