Paper Info
Title
A characterization of online browsing behavior
Abstract
In this paper, we undertake a large-scale study of online user behavior based on search and toolbar logs. We propose a new CCS taxonomy of pageviews consisting of Content (news, portals, games, verticals, multimedia), Communication (email, social networking, forums, blogs, chat), and Search (Web search, item search, multimedia search). We show that roughly half of all pageviews online are content, one-third are communications, and the remaining one-sixth are search. We then give further breakdowns to characterize the pageviews within each high-level category. We then study the extent to which pages of certain types are revisited by the same user over time, and the mechanisms by which users move from page to page, within and across hosts, and within and across page types. We consider robust schemes for assigning responsibility for a pageview to ancestors along the chain of referrals. We show that mail, news, and social networking pageviews are insular in nature, appearing primarily in homogeneous sessions of one type. Search pageviews, on the other hand, appear on the path to a disproportionate number of pageviews, but cannot be viewed as the principal mechanism by which those pageviews were reached. Finally, we study the burstiness of pageviews associated with a URL, and show that by and large, online browsing behavior is not significantly affected by "breaking" material with non-uniform visit frequency.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1145/1772690.1772748
WWW
Keywords
Field
DocType
large-scale study,page type,social networking pageviews,search pageviews,online user behavior,multimedia search,pageviews online,online browsing behavior,web search,item search,social network,pageviews
World Wide Web,Social network,Multimedia search,Computer science,Homogeneous,Burstiness,Page view,Toolbar
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
88
2.90
30
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ravi Kumar1139321642.48
Andrew Tomkins293881401.23