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Web Characteristics and Evolution

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Encyclopedia of Database Systems

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Definition

Web characteristics are properties related to collections of documents accessible via the World Wide Web. There are vast numbers of properties that can be characterized. Some examples include the number of words in a document, the length of a document in bytes, the language a document is authored in, the mime-type of a document, properties of the URL that indentifies a document, HTML tags used to author a document, and the hyperlink structure created by the collection of documents.

As in the physical world, the process of change that the web continually undergoes is identified as web evolution. The web is a tremendously dynamic place, with new users, servers, and pages entering and leaving the system continuously, which causes the web to change very rapidly. Web evolution encompasses changes in all web characteristics, as defined above.

Historical Background

As early as 1994, researchers were interested in studying characteristics of the World Wide Web. As documented by...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microsoft Research, Mountain View, CA, USA

    Dennis Fetterly

Authors
  1. Dennis Fetterly
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Fetterly, D. (2009). Web Characteristics and Evolution. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_456

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