Mapping the “Worlds” of the World Wide Web: (Re)Structuring Global Commerce through Hyperlinks

The World Wide Web is barely 10 years old and already spans the globe, comprising more than a billion public pages and 3 million servers. It is a decentralized information space, created and controlled by many different authors, and has much lower barriers to entry than conventional information media. The authors analyze the connections between 180 different Internet “nations” using data on the number of Web pages and hyperlinks gathered from a commercial search engine in 1998. They also analyze and describe the geography of the hyperlinks, revealing the most and least connected regions and countries, with a particular focus on African and Central Asian countries. A metric is created, the Hyperlink Index, which is similar to the Export-Import Index common in economics and used to measure the flows of physical goods.