We have explored the possibility of obtaining information about the surface nanostructure (i.e., how a given phase of material is distributed near to the surface region) from the analysis of loss plasmons that appear in the lower kinetic energy side of photoelectron and Auger peaks. First, we show an example where information is mainly obtained from the position of the plasmon peak. In practice, two-dimensional growth of an Al2O3 deposit on SiO2 is deduced by identification of surface plasmon excitation due to electron transport of the corresponding Al KLL signal. Furthermore, a new method based on a quantitative (plasmon peak intensity) description of the single plasmon excitation that appears behind a photoelectron peak is proposed. This method has been applied to describe the growth mechanism of MgO deposited by evaporation on TiO2. Thus, it is shown that MgO grows with strong island formation according to the analysis. The consistency of the proposed method is supported by factor analysis of the loss structure behind the Mg 1s peak. Moreover, the validity of the proposed method has been checked using Tougaard background analysis for the same system. From these results, an alternative method, based on analysis of the plasmon structure observed behind x-ray photoelectron peaks, is proposed for characterization of the nanostructure in this type of system. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.