19 clicks to anywhere on the web

ON THE WEB, 19 CLICKS WILL GET YOU ANYWHERE
In a study reported in the science journal Nature, the University of
Notre
Dame physicist Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and his colleagues found that
any
two
randomly selected Web pages are on average only 19 clicks away from
one
another.  The researchers determined this by constructing algorithms
that
collected all the links on a Web page and then followed them to their
destinations, and repeating the process over and over again.  Why is
this
important?  Steve Lawrence, a NEC Research Institute expert on search
design, explains, "Knowing something about the topology lets you know
how
far you need to go to catch something that might be out there. The
search
engine companies are going to benefit from this kind of knowledge."
(AP/San
Jose Mercury News 9 Sep 99)
http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/breaking/merc/docs/008115.htm

Received on Thursday, 9 September 1999 15:50:20 UTC