=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-266/paper-2
|storemode=property
|title=Measuring audience attention across multiple channels for a new Web site
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-266/paper02.pdf
|volume=Vol-266
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/jcdl/Pagano07
}}
==Measuring audience attention across multiple channels for a new Web site==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-266/paper02.pdf
Measuring audience attention across
multiple channels for a new Web site
Joe Pagano
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540
1 (202) 707-2488 | jpag@loc.gov
[June 14, 2007] The views in this paper are the author's only, the start of of 2007 the Library introduced several major new
and are not an endorsement of any product or company, and do sections of its ever-growing site. They have included heritage
not necessarily reflect the views of the Library of Congress or month sites for African Americans, Asian Americans, and
the federal government. Data presented in this paper should not Jewish Americans, an online exhibit on the MacDowell Colony,
be considered official Library of Congress statistics. and lastly Chronicling America, an archive of historic American
newspapers. Each of the sites have unique aspects and goals,
ABSTRACT that require differing analytic strategies for the Library to
This paper presents analysis done on traffic data for a new Web maximize what is learned so future sites can be introduced in
site section offered by the Library of Congress. The period more successful and meaningful ways. Important factors to be
analyzed covers the first two weeks of the site being publicly considered during the introduction of a new site are: whether the
available. Large cultural Web sites, by virtue of their mission, site is discoverable (i.e. will the correct search terms lead users
often serve diverse groups of users and continually add to their to the site) and where the site benefits one unique audience more
Web site content. The additions go beyond routine maintenance than others, whether a specified audience is aware of the site’s
and updating of pages and include the introduction of entirely existence. The two factors are somewhat related. We often think
new products that complement existing offerings. New site of search in terms of answering an immediate question, but not
sections may have new features targeted to new audiences. every member of an audience searches daily for life long topics
While it may be easy to simply roll a new site into existing of interest. In these cases, questions and searches may not be
metrics reports, and only summarize the increased traffic to the immediate and finite, but rather users develop a set of tools they
“whole” site, valuable information can gained by developing can rely on over a long period of time. To that extent, search and
customized analysis for new sites, taking into consideration the discovery take on aspects of developing a personal research
unique features of the site and its intended audience focus. This library. This different perception makes online word of mouth
paper describes a customized analysis done for one particular (OWOM) and referrals more important than in information
site, the Chronicling America site, introduced in March 2007. seeking situations where the answer has a value based on a
The analysis reviews the Web activities, most employed by discrete time constraint. There are more ways to find relevant
users, to drive user attention to the new Web site. information on the Internet than ever before, and savvy online
users are incorporating new behaviors and tools into their search
Categories and Subject Descriptors and discovery behavior. This is probably in part to compensate
C.4 PERFORMANCE OF SYSTEMS - measurement for the shortcomings of the traditional search engines as
techniques, performance attributes algorithms are not advancing quickly enough to be able to
present the most useful topics to users on a consistent basis,
especially where the desired information is more associated with
General Terms research over an extended time period on a consistent topic.
measurement, human factors, metrics, analytics, audience
analysis
2. BACKGROUND
In March 2007, the Library of Congress introduced the
Keywords “Chronicling America.” Web site. The site is a beta site,
analytics, metrics, measurements, log files providing access to select U.S. newspapers. The National Digital
Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the
1. INTRODUCTION National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library
The Library of Congress Web site serves a worldwide audience, of Congress (LC), is responsible for overseeing the project. The
with the priority audiences being comprised of the Congress and NDNP long-term goal is to develop a large Web-based,
the American public. The Library divides its public audience searchable database of historic U.S. newspapers , representing
into several large groups including: the educational community many cities and states. With support by NEH, this rich digital
(students, teachers), librarians, publishers, scholars/researchers resource is being developed and maintained at the Library of
and the general public, including families and children. Since Congress.
Chronicling America was soft launched on March 14, 2007, and since a noticeable “bump” (Fig. 1) on March 15th is derived
formally launched on March 21st, with a home page link and from genealogy site traffic.
press release (http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2007/07-061.html).
Referrer and general metrics data were collected for the period
from the soft launch date through a week after the formal launch
date. The data were analyzed for various parameters, with the
intent of eventually comparing how awareness of this and future
Library of Congress sites spread on the Internet. The goal is to
better understand this process, so the Library can more
efficiently and successfully launch future sites, using a
methodology that serves users who will benefit the most from
the content.
3. METHODOLOGY
Referrer and visit data were pulled for a two week period
starting March 14th, the date the site was first available outside
of the Library’s firewall. The log data were imported into a
database, and various text extractions and calculations were
performed on the URL data to scrutinize referring sources. The
primary technical process used in this study was text
identification and summation, based on the assumptions noted Fig. 1
here. It was assumed that any domain, sub domain, or path that
included the text “mail” was from an online email service. A
similar assumption was made in the case of genealogy, where 4.2 Referrers versus typed / bookmarked
the assumption was based on the text “geneal” and after Both referred visits and typed / bookmarked (TBM) visits show
reviewing several of sites generating large amounts of traffic, a similar pattern for the two week period, except for a generous
was expanded to include “researchguides” and “findagrave”, gap -up for referred visits on the day after introduction. Over the
because these text snippets were in the domains of sites that next several days the gap decreases and eventually equals TBM
appeared to be primarily devoted to genealogy. The database (Fig. 2). Based on TBM strength it can be concluded that many
summed up instances of referrals for each text snippet people view this site as a resource worth remembering. It will be
mentioned, along with the number of visits associated with each interesting to see how this trend develops over an extended
instance of a referral. The charting analysis was then done using period of time.
the visit data. In addition to analyzing “categories” of sites, these
specific domains were included: del.icio.us, Google, Yahoo, the
University of California at Berkeley, a project partner, and the
Library of Congress (note: referrer traffic from the Library’s
main site includes internal along with public traffic). Using
assumptions such as the ones noted above, the data was
analyzed for these categories: email, blogs, genealogy, groups,
and search. The categories are not mutually exclusive and a site
could be counted, as being both from Google and “groups”, and
as both a “genealogy” and a “blogging” site. After the
appropriate calculation fields were created and processed, the
visits data were graphed, to show how each site or category
compared when driving visits to the Chronicling America Web
site.
4. ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
4.1 Soft versus hard launch
The first and easiest comparison was between soft launch and
hard launch data. The Library provided access to the University Fig. 2
of California at Berkeley, as well as other partner institutions,
during development and testing, but site access was limited
based on institutional domains. After the soft launch date, 4.3 Expanding attention
anyone with the correct URL was able to view the Web site. The next segment of analysis was for the week after formal
During the week of the soft launch, the site was demonstrated to introduction of the site. The major drivers of traffic to the
at least one educational group visiting the Library. Traffic to the Chronicling America Site, were in descending order: genealogy
site during the soft launch period indicates that users who were sites, blogs, referrals from the Library’s site (including the home
aware of the site did not generally publicize it much until the page), email, and lastly search. The fact that blogging and email
official launch date. The exception is in the case of at least one both ranked above search (Fig. 3) indicates the important role
user’s apparent interest in sharing the URL with genealogists,
“online word of mouth” (OLWM) can now play in increasing worthwhile to learn more about the process of new site
the number of users showing attention to a Web property. introduction, so that institutions can do it more efficiently and
successfully. Given that “online word of mouth” can be a very
successful way to drive traffic to a site, blogs and email should
play an important role in any site introduction.
This paper is authored by an employee of the United States
Government and is in the public domain.
CAMA’07, June 23, 2007, Vancouver, British Columbia,
Canada.
Fig. 3
4.4 Search versus online word of mouth
Looking closely at the five-day period from March 23rd to the
27th, a new trend can slowly be seen developing. Referrers from
blogs and email show a sharp decline, while search keeps level
or may, in fact, be increasing. The peak on the 26th for email
(Fig. 4) indicates that, at least initially, OWOM functions slower
in email, than in blogging, which would make sense given that
non-spam email is often exchanged between individuals,
blogging is a one to many relationship all of the time. It is
expected that there will be increased referrals from search
engines, as increased links to Chronicling America, help to
increase the site’s ranking on search engines.
Fig. 4
5. CONCLUSION
A Web site will display different patterns of attention
origination during the introduction period. These patterns reflect
different characteristics of content and audience. In the case of
Chronicling America, OWOM played a more significant role
than search in initially focusing user attention on the site. It is