Webometrics is concerned with measuring aspects of the web: web sites, web pages, parts of web pages, words in web pages, hyperlinks, web search engine results. The importance of the web itself as a communication medium and for hosting an increasingly wide array of documents, from journal articles to holiday brochures, needs no introduction. Given this huge and easily accessible source of information, there are limitless possibilities for measuring or counting on a huge scale (e.g., the number of web sites, the number of web pages, the number of blogs) or on a smaller scale (e.g., the number of web sites in Ireland, the number of web pages in the CNN web site, the number of blogs mentioning Barack Obama before the 2008 presidential campaign). This book argues that it can be useful for social scientists to measure aspects of the web and explains how this can be achieved on both a small and large scale. The book is intended for social scientists with research topics that are wholly or partly online (e.g., social networks, news, political communication) and social scientists with offline research topics with an online reflection, even if this is not a core component (e.g., diaspora communities, consumer culture, linguistic change). The book is also intended for library and information science students in the belief that the knowledge and techniques described will be useful for them to guide and aid other social scientists in their research. In addition, the techniques and issues are all directly relevant to library and information science research problems. Table of Contents: Introduction / Web Impact Assessment / Link Analysis / Blog Searching / Automatic Search Engine Searches: LexiURL Searcher / Web Crawling: SocSciBot / Search Engines and Data Reliability / Tracking User Actions Online / Advaned Techniques / Summary and Future Directions
Author(s): Michael Thelwall
Series: Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services
Publisher: Morgan and Claypool Publishers
Year: 2009
Language: English
Commentary: 16030
Pages: 127
Introduction to Webometrics: Quantitative web research for the social sciences......Page 2
Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services......Page 4
Keywords......Page 7
Contents......Page 8
1.1 NEW PROBLEMS: WEB-BASED PHENOMENA......Page 12
1.2 OLD PROBLEMS: OFFLINE PHENOMENA REFLECTED ONLINE......Page 14
1.3 HISTORY AND DEFINITION......Page 16
1.4 BOOK OVERVIEW......Page 17
chapter 2-Web Impact Assessment......Page 20
2.1 WEB IMPACT ASSESSMENT VIA WEB MENTIONS......Page 22
2.2 BESPOKE WEB CITATION INDEXES......Page 25
2.3.1 Category Choices......Page 28
2.3.2 Sampling Methods......Page 29
2.3.3 Example......Page 30
2.3.4 Validity......Page 31
2.4 URL ANALYSIS OF THE SPREAD OF RESULTS......Page 32
2.5 WEB IMPACT REPORTS......Page 34
2.6 WEB CITATION ANALYSIS-AN INFORMATION SCIENCE APPLICATION......Page 35
2.8 SUMMARY......Page 37
3.1 BACKGROUND: LINK COUNTS AS A TYPE OF INFORMATION......Page 38
3.2 TYPES OF WEBOMETRIC LINK ANALYSIS......Page 39
3.3 LINK IMPACT ASSESSMENTS......Page 40
3.3.1 Interpreting the Results......Page 42
3.3.3 Case Study: Links to ZigZagMag.com......Page 43
3.4 CONTENT ANALYSIS OF LINKS......Page 44
3.5 LINK RELATIONSHIP MAPPING......Page 46
3.5.1 Case Studies......Page 49
3.6 COLINK RELATIONSHIP MAPPING......Page 52
3.8 LARGE-SCALE LINK ANALYSIS WITH MULTIPLE SITE GROUPS......Page 55
3.9 LINK DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SECTORS- AN INFORMATION SCIENCE APPLICATION......Page 56
4.1 BLOG SEARCH ENGINES......Page 58
4.2 DATE-SPECIFIC SEARCHES......Page 59
4.3 TREND DETECTION......Page 60
4.4 CHECKING TREND DETECTION RESULTS......Page 63
4.5 LIMITATIONS OF BLOG DATA......Page 65
4.6 ADVANCED BLOG ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES......Page 66
4.7 SUMMARY......Page 67
chapter 5-Automatic Search Engine Searches:
LexiURL Searcher......Page 68
5.2 LexiURL SEARCHER WEB IMPACT REPORTS......Page 69
5.2.1 Web Impact Reports-Classic Interface Example......Page 72
5.3.1 Link Impact Reports-Classic Interface Example......Page 75
5.4.1 Rearranging, Saving, and Printing Network Diagrams......Page 76
5.4.2 Network Diagram-Classic Interface Example......Page 78
5.4.3 Colink Network Diagrams......Page 79
5.5 LexiURL SEARCHER ADDITIONAL FEATURES......Page 80
6.1 WEB CRAWLERS......Page 82
6.3 NETWORK DIAGRAMS OF SETS OF WEB SITES WITH SocSciBot......Page 84
6.4 OTHER USES FOR WEB CRAWLS......Page 89
7.1 SEARCH ENGINE ARCHITECTURE......Page 92
7.1.1 Duplicate and Near-Duplicate Elimination......Page 94
7.3 RESEARCH INTO SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS......Page 95
7.4 MODELING THE WEB’S LINK STRUCTURE......Page 97
8.1 SINGLE-SITE WEB ANALYTICS AND LOG FILE ANALYSIS......Page 100
8.3 SEARCH ENGINE LOG FILE ANALYSIS......Page 102
9.1 QUERY SPLITTING......Page 104
9.2 VIRTUAL MEMETICS......Page 106
9.3 WEB ISSUE ANALYSIS......Page 107
9.4 DATA MINING SOCIAL NETWORK SITES......Page 108
9.5 SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS AND SMALL WORLDS......Page 110
9.7 API PROGRAMMING AND MASHUPS......Page 111
chapter 10-Summary and Future Directions......Page 114
Glossary......Page 116
References......Page 118
Author Biography......Page 126
