{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,10]],"date-time":"2026-06-10T15:29:32Z","timestamp":1781105372664,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":27,"publisher":"National Academy of Sciences","issue":"37","content-domain":{"domain":["www.pnas.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2008,9,16]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>We use sequential large-scale crawl data to empirically investigate and validate the dynamics that underlie the evolution of the structure of the web. We find that the overall structure of the web is defined by an intricate interplay between experience or entitlement of the pages (as measured by the number of inbound hyperlinks a page already has), inherent talent or fitness of the pages (as measured by the likelihood that someone visiting the page would give a hyperlink to it), and the continual high rates of birth and death of pages on the web. We find that the web is conservative in judging talent and the overall fitness distribution is exponential, showing low variability. The small variance in talent, however, is enough to lead to experience distributions with high variance: The preferential attachment mechanism amplifies these small biases and leads to heavy-tailed power-law (PL) inbound degree distributions over all pages, as well as over pages that are of the same age. The balancing act between experience and talent on the web allows newly introduced pages with novel and interesting content to grow quickly and surpass older pages. In this regard, it is much like what we observe in high-mobility and meritocratic societies: People with entitlement continue to have access to the best resources, but there is just enough screening for fitness that allows for talented winners to emerge and join the ranks of the leaders. Finally, we show that the fitness estimates have potential practical applications in ranking query results.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.0805921105","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2008,9,8]],"date-time":"2008-09-08T20:55:04Z","timestamp":1220907304000},"page":"13724-13729","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.cm10313","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":55,"title":["Experience versus talent shapes the structure of the Web"],"prefix":"10.1073","volume":"105","author":[{"given":"Joseph S.","family":"Kong","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"*Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095;"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Nima","family":"Sarshar","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Engineering, University of Regina, Regina, SK, Canada S4S 0A4 ; and"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Vwani P.","family":"Roychowdhury","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"*Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095;"},{"name":"Netseer, Inc., 11943 Montana Avenue, Suite 200, Los Angeles, CA 90049"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"341","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2008,9,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_3_1_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/biomet\/42.3-4.425"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_2_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1002\/asi.4630270505"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_3_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1126\/science.286.5439.509"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_4_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/43604"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_5_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1126\/science.287.5461.2115a"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_6_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/109177a0"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_7_2","unstructured":"M Simkin V Roychowdhury Reinventing Willis. 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Preprint http:\/\/aps.arxiv.org\/abs\/physics\/0407137. (2004)."},{"key":"e_1_3_3_18_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1002\/asi.20653"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_19_2","first-page":"20","author":"Cho J","year":"2004","unstructured":"J Cho, S Roy Impact of Search Engines on Page Popularity, pp. 20\u201329, WWW 2004. (2004).","journal-title":"Impact of Search Engines on Page Popularity"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_20_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.032085699"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_21_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.0605525103"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_22_2","first-page":"551","author":"Cho J","year":"2005","unstructured":"J Cho, S Roy, RE Adams Page Quality: In Search of an Unbiased Web Ranking, pp. 551\u2013562 (2005).","journal-title":"Page Quality: In Search of an Unbiased Web Ranking"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_23_2","first-page":"781","author":"Pandey S","year":"2005","unstructured":"S Pandey, S Roy, C Olston, J Cho, S Chakrabarti Shuffling a Stacked Deck: The Case for Partially Randomized Ranking of Search Engine Results, pp. 781\u2013792, Very Large Data Base 2005. (2005).","journal-title":"Shuffling a Stacked Deck: The Case for Partially Randomized Ranking of Search Engine Results"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_24_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1103\/PhysRevE.63.056125"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_25_2","first-page":"510","author":"Aiello W","year":"2001","unstructured":"W Aiello, F Chung, L Lu Random Evolution in Massive Graphs, pp. 510 (2001).","journal-title":"Random Evolution in Massive Graphs"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_26_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s100510050359"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_27_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/00222500500333258"}],"container-title":["Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/pnas.org\/doi\/pdf\/10.1073\/pnas.0805921105","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2022,4,12]],"date-time":"2022-04-12T18:18:02Z","timestamp":1649787482000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/pnas.org\/doi\/full\/10.1073\/pnas.0805921105"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2008,9,16]]},"references-count":27,"journal-issue":{"issue":"37","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2008,9,16]]}},"alternative-id":["10.1073\/pnas.0805921105"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.0805921105","relation":{},"ISSN":["0027-8424","1091-6490"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0027-8424","type":"print"},{"value":"1091-6490","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2008,9,16]]},"assertion":[{"value":"2008-06-26","order":0,"name":"received","label":"Received","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}},{"value":"2008-09-16","order":2,"name":"published","label":"Published","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}}]}}