# Results: how much of the old Hacker News front page still loads

Checked 1800 URLs from 2008 to 2025 on 2026-09-06 from the server in Italy.

| year | n | alive | moved to root | moved elsewhere | soft-404 | blocked | gone | not the page* | gone incl. blocked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 100 | 54 | 3 | 5 | 0 | 7 | 31 | **39%** | 38% |
| 2009 | 100 | 55 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 8 | 27 | **37%** | 35% |
| 2010 | 100 | 56 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 7 | 33 | **37%** | 40% |
| 2011 | 100 | 56 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 12 | 22 | **32%** | 34% |
| 2012 | 100 | 48 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 14 | 35 | **38%** | 49% |
| 2013 | 100 | 55 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 9 | 30 | **36%** | 39% |
| 2014 | 100 | 58 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 14 | 22 | **28%** | 36% |
| 2015 | 100 | 59 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 14 | 20 | **27%** | 34% |
| 2016 | 100 | 71 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 9 | **9%** | 29% |
| 2017 | 100 | 63 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 22 | 11 | **15%** | 33% |
| 2018 | 100 | 69 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 9 | **9%** | 31% |
| 2019 | 100 | 70 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17 | 13 | **13%** | 30% |
| 2020 | 100 | 74 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 12 | **13%** | 25% |
| 2021 | 100 | 71 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 16 | 7 | **13%** | 23% |
| 2022 | 100 | 79 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 9 | **9%** | 21% |
| 2023 | 100 | 85 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 4 | **4%** | 15% |
| 2024 | 100 | 89 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 4 | **4%** | 11% |
| 2025 | 100 | 93 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0 | **0%** | 7% |

\* not the page = gone + moved to root + moved elsewhere + soft-404: the request did not return the page that was linked.

**The browser pass.** The script pass was refused (401/403/429, a challenge page) or left hanging (timeout, no connection) on 323 URLs; 330 of them were opened in headless Chromium: blocked 230, alive 54, gone 31, moved-elsewhere 3, moved-root 3, soft-404 1. The table above already uses the browser's result where it exists.

**Decade-old links (2014–2016, n=300): gone outright 17.0%** (claim band 20–35%: overstated).
**2013 links (n=100): gone + moved to root 33%, not the page 36%** (Pew's 38% for 2013 pages).

## Home pages versus pages

| link type | n | alive | not the page |
|---|---|---|---|
| site root (homepage) | 139 | 71% | 23% |
| a page on a site | 1661 | 67% | 20% |

## The twenty most-linked hosts

| host | n | alive | not the page | blocked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| github.com | 73 | 70 | 3 | 0 |
| nytimes.com | 30 | 3 | 0 | 27 |
| techcrunch.com | 23 | 23 | 0 | 0 |
| twitter.com | 19 | 14 | 5 | 0 |
| arstechnica.com | 19 | 19 | 0 | 0 |
| medium.com | 18 | 1 | 0 | 17 |
| bloomberg.com | 16 | 0 | 0 | 16 |
| paulgraham.com | 15 | 15 | 0 | 0 |
| wired.com | 14 | 7 | 7 | 0 |
| reuters.com | 14 | 0 | 0 | 14 |
| washingtonpost.com | 13 | 0 | 0 | 13 |
| theguardian.com | 13 | 13 | 0 | 0 |
| youtube.com | 10 | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| theatlantic.com | 10 | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| bbc.co.uk | 10 | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| venturebeat.com | 9 | 1 | 0 | 8 |
| wsj.com | 9 | 0 | 0 | 9 |
| groups.google.com | 8 | 6 | 0 | 2 |
| en.wikipedia.org | 8 | 8 | 0 | 0 |
| npr.org | 8 | 8 | 0 | 0 |

## How links die

| verdict | reason | count |
|---|---|---|
| blocked | browser | 211 |
| gone | 404 | 149 |
| gone | dns | 87 |
| moved-elsewhere | other-host | 23 |
| moved-root | other-host | 21 |
| blocked | browser:reset | 19 |
| gone | browser:TimeoutError | 17 |
| gone | browser:Error | 11 |
| moved-root | same-host | 5 |
| gone | 406 | 5 |
| soft-404 | title | 4 |
| gone | 500 | 4 |
| gone | ssl | 4 |
| moved-elsewhere | browser:other-host | 3 |
| moved-root | browser:other-host | 3 |
| soft-404 | parked | 3 |
| gone | 409 | 2 |
| gone | 400 | 2 |
| gone | browser:404 | 2 |
| moved-elsewhere | same-host | 2 |
| gone | 502 | 2 |
| gone | 504 | 2 |
| gone | 451 | 2 |
| gone | 503 | 2 |
| gone | refused | 1 |
| gone | 522 | 1 |
| gone | 410 | 1 |
| gone | 520 | 1 |
| soft-404 | browser:title | 1 |
| gone | 405 | 1 |
| blocked | captcha-url | 1 |
| gone | 418 | 1 |
| gone | browser:504 | 1 |
| blocked | by-hand:browser-block page | 1 |