Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

Researchers followed over 657,000 links from a restored 0.mk database (a Macedonian social sharing site active 2009-2014) and found that 76.7% no longer loaded or returned errors in 2026. Even accounting for sites that may still exist but block automated crawlers, only about 21-23% of the original content remained accessible, illustrating significant link rot over the past decade. The study provides a snapshot of how much of the early web has disappeared or become unreachable.