Patterns of Web Linking to Heterogeneous Groups of Companies: The Case of Stock Exchange Indexes

Purpose – To extend co-link analysis to Websites of heterogeneous companies belonging to different industries and countries. To cluster companies by industries and compare results from different countries. Design/methodology/approach – Websites of 255 companies that belong to five stock exchange indexes were included in the study. Data on co-links pointing to these Websites were gathered using Yahoo!. Co-link data were analyzed using multidimensional scaling (MDS) to generate MDS maps that would position companies based on their co-link counts. Findings –Comparisons of results across different countries and economies showed the following overall pattern: companies whose businesses are information based tend for form well defined clusters while companies operating on a more traditional business model tend not to form clear groups. A comparison between EU zone and the U.S. suggests that the EU economy is not well integrated yet. Practical implications – Findings from the study suggest the possibility of using co-link analysis to distinguish the information based industries from traditional industries. Originality/value –Extended co-link analysis from a single industry to heterogeneous industries with global and complex business phenomena