Data from May 5, 1999

Based on an analysis of the same five very small searches used for the overlap analysis, this table shows the number of total hits and the number and percent of dead links from those total hits for each search and engine. Dead links were those URLs that resulted in a 404 error message (file not found) from the server or were otherwise inaccessible.

This example is from a total of 267 hits from four searches found by ten search engines Of the 267 total hits, 122 were unique Web pages. Of those, 26 were dead links.

While this sample is too small to make an accurate generalization, Yahoo!'s Inktomi, Snap, and Lycos had the lowest percentage of dead links, a big change from the March 1999 results. At the same time the Yahoo's and Snap's Inktomi databases scores so well, Anzwers and HotBot (which run on the same Inktomi search cluster), fared worse this month. Northern Light had the highest number and percentage of dead links. Even the newcomer Fast had a few.

See also the March 1999 Dead Link Report and the Jan. 1999 Dead Link Report.

While decisions about which Web search engine to use should not be based on size alone, this information is especially important when looking for very specific keywords, phrases, and areas of specialized interest. See also the following statistical analyses:

• Relative Size of the search engines
• Total Size Estimate
• Overlap between the search engines
• Unique Hits hits from each
• Change Over Time