Web trends

Tony Sanders <sanders@bsdi.com>

Mail folder: WWW Talk Jul-Oct 1993
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Message-id: <9309070406.AA20997@austin.BSDI.COM>
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: Web trends
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Organization: Berkeley Software Design, Inc.
Date: Mon, 06 Sep 1993 23:06:36 -0500
From: Tony Sanders <sanders@bsdi.com>
Status: RO

I've noticed that a lot of documents have zero or one hypertext link in
them and then we have "navigation" nodes that tie everything together.
While I'm not surprised at this trend I think that if we don't do something
to change it the Web will not scale well and we will end up with islands
of information instead of a web.  If we are to have true hypertext then
we need some way to have users augment this structure leaving behind "snail
trails" for future users to follow.

I think it should be possible to analyze server logs (once browers support
``Referer: URL'' that is) and extract some of this information.  LINK
commands could then be used to extend the structure beyond the local
server.  This could fit in very nicely with Web robots.

Hope this is some food for thought.

--sanders