“Digital Decay”: How 38% of Websites from 2013 Have Vanished from the Internet

A new study highlights a significant issue on the internet: much of the content that appears there vanishes within months or years. The web is constantly disintegrating, with millions of sites and web pages that were once available now disappearing. This phenomenon, though known, lacked concrete data about its scale — until now.

The Disappearing Web
A Pew Research Center analysis sheds light on this phenomenon. Their data shows that 38% of websites that existed in 2013 are no longer available. This statistic is notable, especially when compared to the 8% of web pages that have disappeared since 2023.

Digital Decay
Researchers term this ongoing phenomenon as “digital decay.” The creation and disappearance of websites is a continuous process driven by various causes.

Broken Links Everywhere
Pew Research Center examined links on government websites, media outlets, and Wikipedia references. They found that 23% of all websites contain at least one broken link, meaning a link to a non-existent page or site.

References Leading Nowhere
Wikipedia is particularly affected by this issue. According to the study, 54% of Wikipedia pages contain at least one broken link in their references.

The Vanishing Twitter
Social networks are also impacted. On Twitter, nearly one in five tweets (18%) are no longer visible since their publication. In 60% of these cases, the account that created the tweet became private, was suspended, or deleted. In the remaining 40%, the account owner deleted the message while keeping the account active.

Tweets in Turkish and Arabic
The issue of disappearing tweets is especially frequent for posts in Turkish or Arabic. In just three months, 40% of these messages have vanished. Furthermore, “tweets from accounts with the default profile settings are especially prone to disappear from public view,” the report explains.

The Lost Worlds of the Internet
The scale of the problem is immense, especially over time. Little remains of the early internet of the late ’90s, exemplified by the…