What do web users do? An empirical analysis of web use

This paper provides an empirical characterization of user actions at the we b browser. The study is based on an analysis of 4 months of logged client-s ide data that describes user actions with recent versions of Netscape Navig ator. In particular, the logged data allow us to determine the title, URL a nd time of each page visit, how often they visited each page, how long they spent at each page, the growth and content of bookmark collections, as wel l as a variety of other aspects of user interaction with the web. The resul ts update and extend prior empirical characterizations of web use. Among th e results we show that web page revisitation is a much more prevalent activ ity than previously reported (approximately 81% of pages have been previous ly visited by the user), that most pages are visited for a surprisingly sho rt period of time, that users maintain large (and possibly overwhelming) bo okmark collections, and that there is a marked lack of commonality in the p ages visited by different users. These results have implications for a wide range of web-based tools including the interface features provided by web browsers, the design of caching proxy servers, and the design of efficient web sites. (C) 2001 Academic Press.