A statistical analysis of high-traffic websites

Although scholars have increasingly recognized the important role of the Internet within the field of mass communications, little research has been done analyzing the behavior of individuals online. The success or failure of a site is often dependent on the number of visitors it receives (often called “traffic”) and this includes newspapers that are attempting to direct larger audiences to their websites. Theoretical arguments have been made for certain factors (region, social media presence, backlinks, etc.) having a positive correlation with traffic, but few, if any, statistical analyses have been done on traffic patterns. This study looks at a sample of approximately 300 high-traffic websites and forms several regression models in order to analyze which factors are most highly correlated with Internet traffic and what the nature of that correlation is.

Grantor dc:publisher

Kansas State University

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Madden, Joshua

• online
• traffic
• websites
• linguistics
• online newspapers

Statement dc:rights

• © the author. This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/2097/17650

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:krex.k-state.edu:2097/17650