Measuring the internet economy in The Netherlands a big data analysis 2016 | 14

As the Bean Review (2016) demonstrates, the internet has complicated our economic
systems, but it is also a source of vast amounts of data with which the internet economy
can be studied. With this in mind, a three-way partnership between Google, Statistics
Netherlands and Dataprovider has been set up to study the internet economy. Our partner
Dataprovider has extensive experience in crawling the internet to collect data on websites
on a regular basis, in particular companies’ websites. In the current research project, their
data are made available to Statistics Netherlands. This data source constitutes the innovative
‘big data’ aspect of the internet economy. In addition, Statistics Netherlands possesses a
large amount of statistical data on the businesses within the economy. It remains then to link
Dutch websites to Dutch businesses. Doing so facilitates a deeper analysis of the internet
economy.
Another important reason for this research is that there is not yet a broadly accepted
definition of the internet economy. This research contributes to this debate by constructing
a pragmatic definition within the context of the available web-based source. Importantly,
the definition was formulated in cooperation with stakeholders from Dutch government,
business-world, academia, Google and Dataprovider. The resulting definition classifies
businesses with websites into various categories depending on how a business makes use of
the internet. These categories are:
−−
A: Businesses without websites
−−
B: Businesses with a passive (category B1) or active online presence (B2)
−−
C: Online stores
−−
D: Online services
−−
E: Internet related ICT
Websites are allocated to these categories predominantly according to the information
available from Dataprovider. Further, Categories C, D and E as a group constitute the ‘core’
of the internet economy. The core consists of online stores, online services such as dating
sites, price comparison sites, or online entertainment, and of internet related ICT such as
app developers, web-hosting and internet marketing. Outside of the core we distinguish two
further types of online presence for businesses: active and passive. Active online presence
means that businesses provide a manner to interact with them directly, such as making a
reservation or ordering a brochure. Passive online presence means that businesses purely use
the internet to provide information about their activities and to publicise their organisation.
To analyse the internet economy characteristics in a coherent way, the characteristics of the
websites need to be linked to statistical information on the businesses behind the website.
This implies a nontrivial methodological challenge which is dealt with using two key pieces
of information. Firstly, Statistics Netherlands records the websites of business in its General
Business Register (GBR). Secondly, businesses often report their Chamber of Commerce (CoC)
number on their website. These identifiers provide the basis upon which websites can be
linked to businesses. The successful linking to the GBR facilitates further links to a variety of
Statistics Netherlands data sources. These data sources allow us to build an understanding of
the characteristics of the internet economy from a variety of perspectives including, turnover,
employment, and geography.
Our analysis identifies circa 550,000 businesses which are in some way present on the
internet. This constitutes 36% of all businesses. Of the businesses which do not have a
website, 83% represent self-employed persons. Of all self-employed persons, we find
that almost 70% do not have a website. The characteristics of the internet economy are
CBS | Discussion Paper, 2016 | 14 4