Identifying Web browsing trends and patterns

Since it entered the popular culture in 1994, the World Wide Web has grown from approximately two million servers to more than 110 million in 2001, according to the Internet Software Consortium. Jupiter Media Metrix, an Internet research company, estimates that during this same period, the number of US home Web users has likewise increased from 3 million to more than 89 million. Has this phenomenal growth resulted in fundamental changes in the way users browse the Web? To address this question, we analyzed a sample of more than 20,000 Internet users who accessed the Web from July 1997 through December 1999. This nationally representative data set collected by Jupiter Media Metrix is unique because it was gathered from users´ computers, not servers, thus it is immune to caching problems present in other Web usage studies