Web hyperlink patterns and the financial variables of the global banking industry

The goal of the study is to explore business and social information contained in web data and to examine the effectiveness of webometrics methods in obtaining this type of information. Specifically, this study combines the inlink and co-link analysis techniques to make a complete examination of the international banking industry. Results from the analysis were compared with the banks’ real financial situation to determine the validity and reliability of the link analysis methods. Statistically significant correlations were found between inlink data and several financial variables. A comparison between Asian banks and other banks showed that the former attracted significantly more inlinks. The multidimensional scaling (MDS) maps generated from co-link data suggest that geographic and linguistic factors determine competitive clusters in the international banking industry. A comparison of the MDS maps from the two different time periods revealed important business information, notably that the Chinese banks moved closer to the major banks from the USA and UK.

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