What the article really should have said is 'site hops', rather than clicks. So navigating anywhere within yahoo counts as just a single hop. Now as long as you can get to yahoo, you can get to any other site listed in its hierarchy while expending only one 'site hop'. It's more like 19 clicks if you look at things on the page level.
The article is inaccurate in saying it takes 4 'clicks' to get from one site to any other. In the study quoted, one has to navigate through an average of 3 other sites to get from one site to any other (i.e. you have to ignore any clicks you make within a site). That makes 4 site-hops rather than link clicks. 19 is more likely to be the number of actual clicks you have to make as you navigate. For the original paper, see: The Small World Web (http://www.parc.xerox.com/iea/www/SmallWorld.html )
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What the article really should have said is 'site hops', rather than clicks. So navigating anywhere within yahoo counts as just a single hop. Now as long as you can get to yahoo, you can get to any other site listed in its hierarchy while expending only one 'site hop'. It's more like 19 clicks if you look at things on the page level.
The article is inaccurate in saying it takes 4 'clicks' to get from one site to any other. In the study quoted, one has to navigate through an average of 3 other sites to get from one site to any other (i.e. you have to ignore any clicks you make within a site). That makes 4 site-hops rather than link clicks. 19 is more likely to be the number of actual clicks you have to make as you navigate. For the original paper, see: The Small World Web (http://www.parc.xerox.com/iea/www/SmallWorld.html )