Internet Visibility of Localized Websites of Twelve Global Brands in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong: An Evaluation with Web Impact Factor (WIF)

The localized Web sites of twelve global brands were evaluated via Web impact factor (WIF), a measurement of the number of inlinking pages in a Web site divided by the number of indexed pages of that Web site in the databases of a search engine. The highest and the lowest WIF, and the mean WIF were identified and compared for each of the twelve global brands to reveal their visibility and impact on the Internet. The WIF of the brand Web sites was also compared between six pair of direct competitors in six industries. No correlation was found between the rank of a global brand and the value of its Web site's WIF.