Analysis of User Web Traffic with A Focus on Search Activities.
Feng Qiu, Zhenyu Liu, Junghoo Cho · 2005
Although search engines are playing an increasingly important role in users' Web access, our understanding is still limited regarding the magnitude of search-engine influence. For example, how many times do people start browsing the Web from a search engine? How much percentage of Web traffic is incurred as a result of search? To what extent does a search engine like Google extend the scope of Websites that users can reach? To study these issues, in this paper we analyze a real Web access trace collected over a period of two and half months from the UCLA Computer Science Department. Our study indicates that search engines influence about 13.6% of the users' Web traffic directly and indirectly. In addition, our study provides realistic estimates for certain key parameters used for Web modelling.