About 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are unavailable now and 8% of pages from 2023 are unavailable; 23% of news pages have at least one broken link
38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later — Table of Contents Table of Contents
Context & Ripple Effects
This finding updates an established record of web decay: a 2021 analysis found that a quarter of deep links in long-running New York Times coverage were inaccessible. Pew's newer snapshot shows the problem is not confined to old archives, with pages from the prior year already disappearing.
The result matters especially for news publishing: nearly a quarter of news pages contain at least one broken link, making cited reporting and its supporting record less durable. Later coverage characterized the same pattern as a quickly disappearing web.
First-order effects
- News publishers and site operators face immediately less reliable outbound references, as broken links weaken readers' ability to reach cited source material.
- Researchers, readers, and archivists encounter gaps in both older material and recently published pages, raising the effort required to verify or revisit online records.
Second-order effects
- Publishers have a stronger operational case for link checking, redirects, and preserving copies of material they cite; the earlier New York Times finding suggests this is a persistent maintenance burden rather than a one-time cleanup.
- As links fail, audiences may increasingly depend on the publishers, archives, and platforms that retain accessible copies, rather than on the original source URL.
Third-order effects
- If recent-page loss remains material, the web's link-based citation system becomes less dependable as a long-term public record, shifting preservation from an implicit property of publishing to an explicit responsibility.
- The pattern could widen the divide between organizations able to maintain archives and smaller publishers whose material disappears or becomes harder to trace; the reported data establish the risk, not how evenly that burden will fall.
The trend: This is one data point in the shift from a web assumed to be permanently addressable toward one where digital preservation and link maintenance require continuing investment.