A link taxonomy for Web pages

A World Wide Web page is a globally accessible document, although its author frequently designs the page for a specific audience, or for a specific purpose. The author can use a number of rhetorical devices, such as providing links to other pages, to help accomplish his or her purpose. Each link presents a choice to the reader; whether or not to follow the link. The information contained in the link's anchor, text and/or image, and the context in which it is presented influence the reader's decision and can be controlled to some extent by the author. Within this structure, how do Web page authors inform readers about what will be found at the other end of a link? This paper presents the results of an investigation of the use of links on Web pages, wherein we performed a content analysis of 75 Web pages and their links. For each link, we analyzed the appearance of the anchor, the context in which the anchor was placed, the apparent purpose of the link, and the type of page to which it led. The resulting taxonomy of link types contains the major categories navigation, expansion and resource. Subcategories provide finer distinctions. We compare this taxonomy to other lists of link types. Studying the anchor and its context also allowed us to determine what reasons (explicit or implicit) the author offered the reader to traverse a link. The results of this research will provide a conceptual framework in which Web page design can be considered, including issues of authoring, retrieval, and built-in and on-the-fly guidance for reading or browsing.