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Using Google to Calculate Web Decay

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the bit-rot-quantified dept.

scottennis writes: "Google has yet another application: measuring the rate of decay of information on the web. By plotting the number of results at 3,6, and 12 months for a series of phrases, this study claims to have uncovered a corresponding 60-70-80 percent decay rate. Essentially, 60% of the web changes every 3 months." You may be amused by some of the phrases he notes as exceptional, too.

12 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. bill gates sucks... by jnana · · Score: 2, Funny

    For once, that is on topic. I'm glad to see that the phrase 'bill gates sucks' had the lowest decay rate of the phrases that the guy tested for.

  2. blessed by thanjee · · Score: 4, Funny

    How long until all the cheesemakers have fully decayed and are no longer blessed?

    I don't look forward to that day.

    Long live cheese and cheese makers!

    --
    Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
  3. The Web is decaying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: The web is decaying

    Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered web community when recently IDC confirmed that the web accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all server usage. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that the web has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. The web is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking usage test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict the web's future. The hand writing is on the wall: the web faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for the web because the web is decaying. Things are looking very bad for the web. As many of us are already aware, the web continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. Dot-coms are the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of their core developers.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    The web leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of the web. How many users of other protocols are there? Let's see. The number of the web versus other protocols posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 other protocols users. Web posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of other protocols posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of the web. A recent article put the web at about 80 percent of the HTTP market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 web users. This is consistent with the number of Usenet posts about the web.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, the web went out of business and was taken over by Slashdot who sell another troubled web service. Now Slashdot is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that the web has steadily declined in market share. The web is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If the web is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dabblers. The web continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, the web is dead.

    Fact: the web is dead.

  4. Stop Web Decay Today by weave · · Score: 4, Funny
    Do your part to stop web decay. Include this in a cron job. For best results, be sure to brush, I mean touch, three times a day...

    find /var/www/html -name '*' -exec /bin/touch {} \;
  5. Self-fulfilling prophecy? by flipflapflopflup · · Score: 1, Funny
    The link now says:

    Temporarily Unavailable

    The Angelfire site you are trying to reach has been temporarily suspended due to excessive bandwidth consumption.

    The site will be available again in approximately 2 hours!

  6. Google/CowboyNeal Study by BoBaBrain · · Score: 5, Funny

    On a similar note, I was curious to see what the CowboyNeal content of the web is. As luck would have it, a precise answer can be found easily.

    Google gives us the following interesting results:

    3,840,000 sites contain the word Cheese.

    1,640 sites contain the words CowboyNeal and Cheese.

    Therefore, 4.27083333333333333333333333333e-2% of cheese related sites contain a reference to CowboyNeal.

    As cheese is a randomly chosen word with no special connection to CowboyNeal it is reasonable to assume that 4.27083333333333333333333333333e-2% of all sites contain a reference to The Cowboy (Assuming the number of sites dedicated to CowboyNeal equals the number dedicated to ignoring him).

    So there we have it. The web is 99.957291666666666666666666666667% CowboyNeal free. :)


    I said the results were "precise", not "accurate". :P

    --
    I am a Karma Library.
    1. Re:Google/CowboyNeal Study by TheTomcat · · Score: 4, Funny

      Do you sell insurance?

      S

  7. Re:Web Death by DarklordJonnyDigital · · Score: 2, Funny

    Oh, most of the web is still around... it just looks like pages are decaying because every link you click has already been Slashdotted ;)

  8. Heh.. Talk about web decay. by Bowie+J.+Poag · · Score: 5, Funny



    Looks like 100% of the link mentioned in this article decayed in a little under 5 minutes! ;)
    Cheers,

    --
    Bowie J. Poag

  9. Google measurements--varied and fun! by lute3 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Using Google to calculate Tooth Decay.

  10. Intermittence by markmoss · · Score: 4, Funny
    At any given time, about five percent of Web pages are intermittent, which is to say they are gone but will return.

    For example, most web pages linked to in slashdot articles.
  11. Re:we've lost the ability to rely on hyperlinks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Nobody's ever going to keep content on the web that's 20 years old.