Diameter of the World Wide Web

R. Albert and H. Jeong and A.-L. Barabasi

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Summary

The average distance between any two documents is 19 clicks wide. In a couple years the diameter may increase from 19 to 21. This was determined by probability and graph theory, as outlined below.

Methods

A robot was constructed to determine the average probability for any number of out links and in links to a page. A Gaussian distribution of links was determined, indicating some structure by the authors. Then, a random graph was generated with the appropriate probabilities of links, and the shortest path between any two random points was determined to be 19 clicks.

Keywords

diameter, connectivity, random graphs, link distribution

Rating

8

Bibtex Entry

@article{ albert99diameter,

author = "R. Albert and H. Jeong and A.-L. Barabasi",

title = "Diameter of the World Wide Web",

journal = "Nature",

volume = "401",

pages = "130-131",

year = "1999",

url = "http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/context/938378/0"

}

 

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