Web hyperlink patterns and the financial variables of the global banking industry

Abstract

The goal of the study is to explore business and social information contained in Web data and to examine the effectiveness of Webometrics methods in obtaining this type of information. Specifically, this study combines the inlink and co-link analysis techniques to make a complete examination of the international banking industry. Results from the analysis were compared with the banks’ real financial situation to determine the validity and reliability of the link analysis methods. The top 50 international banks from 15 different countries were candidates for the study. Web hyperlink data were collected for two time periods six months apart. Financial data from two different years were collected to find out which year correlated better with inlink data. Statistically significant correlations were found between inlink data and several financial variables. A comparison between Asian banks and other banks showed that the former attracted significantly more inlinks. The multidimensional scaling (MDS) maps generated from co-link data suggest that geographic and linguistic factors determine competitive clusters in the international banking industry. A comparison of the MDS maps from the two different time periods revealed important business information, notably that the Chinese banks moved closer to the major banks from the U.S. and U.K.. This is in line with the current state of Chinese banks, which emerged from the financial crisis of 2008 in a stronger position than they had held going into it.