China

China’s Internet rarely links to foreign websites

The world is not so flat after all!

Only six percent of the Chinese Internet’s hyperlinks leave China’s webspace.

The above chart was based on a study of 40 million external links on 5 million pages of 15,000 sites in China.

Professor Jonathan Zhu of City University of Hong Kong led this research into Chinese hyperlink behavior, which I came across on Tobias Escher’s excellent blog.

Escher qualifies the national/provincial distinctions based on a conversation with Zhu: “While this figure is more or less robust he tells me that the distinction between Home vs. Other provinces is still preliminary as it is based on geo-IP location. This might tell you where the server sits but not necessarily much about the “location” of the websites its been hosting. Therefore they are now trying to explore new methods including content mining.”

I corresponded with Professor Zhu, who said he would alert me when further results come out in a few months.

Technorati Tags: China, hyperlink, Jonathan Zhu, Tobias Escher

© 2008 Thomas Crampton.