Commercial Web site links

Every hyperlink pointing at a web site is a potential source of new visitors, especially one near the top of a results page from a popular search engine. The order of the links in a search results page is often decided upon by an algorithm that takes into account the number and quality of links to all matching pages. The number of standard links targeted at a site is therefore doubly important, yet little research has touched on the actual interlinkage between business web sites, which numerically dominate the web. This paper discusses business use of the web and related search engine design issues as well as research on general and academic links before reporting on a survey of the links published by a relatively random collection of business web sites. The results indicate that around 66% of web sites do carry external links, most of which are targeted at a specific purpose, but that about 17% publish general links, with implications for those designing and marketing web sites.