Just how international is my Web site? Estimating reach through analysis of hourly demand

Abstract

The increased commercialisation of Internet domain sales created the unanticipated side effect that domain extensions no longer signify the residence of the domain user. As a result, the analysis of the domain attributes in the Web access logs no longer provides accurate information on the origin of the users and thus of the geographical ‘reach’ of a given site. This study provides an alternative method to assess the geographical ‘reach’ by calculating the average demand for Web pages in hourly intervals originating from each time zone. The resulting analysis tool, which relates to Greenwich Mean Time, is location independent and can be applied to Web sites world wide.