Subject: Web page accesses do not follow Pareto's Law?

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 07:11:40 +0200

I have a Web site with more than 100 static pages
(http://www.zak.co.il/deaf-info/old/ for the curious).
Recently I had to modify the most frequently accessed pages of the Web
site, according to access statistics accumulated by the Web hosting
service.

What I found was that Pareto's Law does not seem to be followed.  The
top 20% pages account for 57% of the Web page hits, and to account for
80% of the Web page hits, you need the top 40%.  Thus, the distribution
of hits in my Web site is more egalitarian than Pareto's Law (which says
that the top 20% account for 80% of whatever they do) would suggest.

Is this a general phenomenon for Web sites?
Could this be due to caching, proxying, mirroring in remote locations?
Is there a theory for this, which is supported by experiments?
                                                      --- Omer
-- 
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---

From: Uri Even-Chen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:03:24 +0200

> Is there a theory for this, which is supported by experiments?

You should not take the numbers 20%/80% literally.  It can also be
25%/75% or 30%/70%.  The idea is that a majority of the hits is on a
minority of your pages.  It also depends on your website.  In other
websites it may be different.

Best Regards,

Uri Even-Chen
Speedy Net
Raanana, Israel.

E-mail: [email-masked]
Phone: +972-9-7715013
Website: www.uri.co.il
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