On the universality of rank distributions of website popularity

TL;DR

This paper analyzes long-term website query data across different regions and times, proposing a modified Zipf law to describe website popularity, which appears to be a universal Internet property.

Contribution

It introduces a two-parameter modification of Zipf law and demonstrates the stability and universality of website rank distributions across diverse datasets.

Findings

Rank distributions are stable over time and regions.

Modified Zipf law effectively models website popularity.

Website popularity may be a universal Internet characteristic.

Abstract

We present an extensive analysis of long-term statistics of the queries to websites using logs collected on several web caches in Russian academic networks and on US IRCache caches. We check the sensitivity of the statistics to several parameters: (1) duration of data collection, (2) geographical location of the cache server collecting data, and (3) the year of data collection. We propose a two-parameter modification of the Zipf law and interpret the parameters. We find that the rank distribution of websites is stable when approximated by the modified Zipf law. We suggest that website popularity may be a universal property of Internet.