[thelist] Counting words on a site

Jared M. Spool jspool at uie.com
Thu Mar 28 15:14:00 CST 2002


Shaun Anderson asked if anybody has done this:

> I've been asked to see if I can come up with a way of counting the
> number of words on our German site.  They're going to send the
> English equivalent to be translated into Japanese, and are trying to
> budget for it.

We've counted words on web pages for our analyses on text density
(number of words divided by page length).

To calculate the number of words, we loaded the page into MS Word
(Using Open File with the Web Pages type -- you can enter the URL
right into the file box). We then use Tools | Word Count. (We're
using Word 2000 -- you're mileage may vary...)

CNN currently has 729 words on their home page. The lead story has
407 words in it. The story about Lyle Lovett being trampled by a bull
has 238 words. (It's good to see CNN has editorial priorities.)

Depending on the size of your site and how accurate your number needs
to be, you may want to sample instead of counting every page.
Selecting a representative set of pages should give you a sense and
you can add to that

[By the way, after doing this on dozens of sites, we found a
strong correlation between page density and success. The denser
the sites, the more likely users found what they were seeking. This
was part of our finding that whitespace in page design makes sites
less usable.  In case you cared why we were counting words.]

Hope this helps.

Jared

- o - o - o -
Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
242 Neck Road
Bradford, MA 01835 USA
(978) 374-8300  fax: (978) 374-9175
jspool at uie.com   http://www.uie.com



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