A statistical analysis of high-traffic websites

Master of ScienceDepartment of Journalism and Mass CommunicationsSteven SmethersAlthough 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