How many websites go offline every day?

Why do websites disappear - and what happens to the content?

Roughly 26% of domains expire without renewal each year. With 364 million domains registered globally, that's ~95 million expirations a year, about 260,000 per day. The live counter counts all domain expirations (Verisign DNIB data), which includes parked and never-active domains alongside real websites. Estimates suggest 35–40% had active content, but no source directly measures this split.

What link rot and disappearing websites mean for you personally

You've clicked a link that returned a 404. That's link rot in action - and it is far more widespread than most people realize. A 2024 Pew Research Center study found that 25% of all web pages that existed in 2013 were unreachable by 2023. One quarter of the internet from a decade ago has effectively ceased to exist. For academic research, this is devastating: studies on citation link decay find that 50-60% of URLs cited in academic papers stop working within 10 years.

For everyday users, the practical impact is more diffuse but constant. That recipe you bookmarked three years ago. The news article your friend shared. The forum thread with the answer to your question. All of these carry meaningful probability of being gone within a few years. Government and institutional websites are particularly vulnerable: when administrations change, entire archives can vanish without warning.

The only meaningful counter to link rot is active preservation - projects like the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which has captured over 866 billion web pages. If you find a page valuable, archive it yourself at archive.org. The web you see today is not the web that will exist in five years. The counter above is a real-time reminder of digital impermanence.

The scale of web impermanence: 95 million domain deaths per year

Websites going offline vs. new websites created, today

Net web growth is positive - more sites are created than die. But the constant churn of closures reveals the impermanence of most digital projects.

From the first 404 to 866 billion archived pages: a history of web decay

1. 1996Wayback Machine / Internet Archive founded; begins archiving the web
2. 2000Dot-com bust: tens of thousands of startup websites disappear as companies fail
3. 2005Wikipedia study: 49% of citations become inaccessible within 10 years ("link rot")
4. 2021Harvard study: 25% of links in New York Times articles (1996-2019) broken; 49% of Supreme Court decisions
5. 2024DNIB: ~364M global domains; ~260K expire daily; Wayback Machine: 866B pages archived

Domain expiration trends over time

Studies by the Pew Research Center found that 25% of web pages from 2013 were unreachable by 2023. Domain expiration, hosting lapses, and platform shutdowns kill tens of millions of pages per year, making "link rot" a significant threat to the long-term accessibility of the web's collective knowledge.

Link rot and digital death: the web's quiet disappearing act

In perspective

How the number is calculated

Verisign DNIB Q4 2024: ~364 million registered domains; .com+.net renewal rate 73.9%, meaning 26.1% expire annually. Extrapolated across all TLDs: ~95 million domain expirations per year ÷ 365 days = ~260,274 per day ÷ 86,400 seconds ≈ 3.0 per second. This covers all expiring domains, including parked or never-active ones. Studies estimate roughly 35–40% had active content, but no source directly measures this split.

Sources: Domain Name Industry Brief (DNIB) Q4 2024 - Website Rating - Domain & Hosting Statistics 2024. Methodology →

Frequently asked questions

How many websites expire or go offline each day?

Verisign's DNIB data shows approximately 26% of domains expire annually without renewal. With ~364 million global registrations, that's roughly 95 million expirations per year, about 260,000 per day. This covers all expiring domains, including parked and never-active ones. Studies estimate 35–40% had live content, but no published source directly measures that split.

What happens to a website's content when the domain expires?

When a domain expires, the website becomes inaccessible. After a grace period (typically 30-75 days), the domain enters an "expired" or "redemption" phase, then may be made available for re-registration. Content is not automatically preserved. The Wayback Machine (archive.org) crawls and archives billions of web pages, but coverage is uneven, many sites are never crawled or are only partially preserved.

Is the web growing or shrinking?

The web is growing in total size but experiences enormous churn. Netcraft data shows ~8-17 million new sites per month, while ~7-8 million domains expire monthly. The net is growing, but the turnover represents tens of millions of "dead" websites per year. This churn is a measure of the web's dynamism, startups failing, businesses pivoting, individuals abandoning projects, and of the impermanence of digital content.