Data study · June 15, 2026
We probed 9,992,781 of the world’s most popular domains and labelled each one alive, redirect, blocked, or dead. The real dead figure is 14.1% — not the 27.6% a naive crawl reports, because most of “dead” is just blocking you.
14.1%
of the 9,992,781 probed top domains are genuinely dead — gone from DNS or refusing every connection.
8.9%
answer but block bots
1.1%
of responders are parked
Homepage-level reachability from a datacenter IP — a lower bound.
14.1%
of the 9,992,781 probed domains are genuinely dead — no DNS, no connection, nothing answers. That is the real dead-web figure, not the 27.6% a naive crawl reports.
8.9%
answer but block automated clients (403/429/challenge) from a datacenter IP — alive, just not to a bot. Naive scans count these as dead.
10.3%
of all domains no longer resolve in DNS — the dominant cause of true death, 1,027,492 domains gone dark.
33%
.cn is the deadest common TLD — institutional and cheap-registration TLDs rot fastest, well above the .com baseline.
Every probed domain, by outcome
A naive 2024 crawl of the same top-10M list reported 27.6% dead. Probe honestly — separating genuine death from anti-bot blocking and answered errors — and the real figure is 14.1%. Here is where the difference goes.
DNS failure, anti-bot 403s, 404/5xx and timeouts all lumped together
No DNS, connection refused, or nothing accepts a connection
Where the “dead” really goes
The same domains, probed by an honest bot and by a browser-like client (real Chrome TLS/JA3). Where the browser column is lower on dead/blocked, the site is reachable — the bot just wasn't let in.
| Probe arm | Probed | Alive | Blocked | Dead | Dead % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polite bot | 9,992,781 | 7,657,422 | 891,517 | 1,412,544 | 14.1% |
| Reachability (browser) | 9,997,315 | 7,743,245 | 819,599 | 1,412,889 | 14.1% |
| China (.cn) | 33% |
| India (.in) | 25.8% |
| United States of America (.us) | 22% |
| Brazil (.br) | 20.9% |
| Spain (.es) | 16.6% |
| Japan (.jp) | 15.6% |
| United Kingdom (.uk) | 15.3% |
| Australia (.au) | 15% |
| Russia (.ru) | 14.8% |
| France (.fr) | 14.5% |
| Canada (.ca) | 14.1% |
| Italy (.it) | 13.5% |
| Poland (.pl) | 13.1% |
| Sweden (.se) | 11.6% |
| Switzerland (.ch) | 9.8% |
| Netherlands (.nl) | 9.7% |
| Austria (.at) | 8.6% |
| Germany (.de) | 7.6% |
| Czechia (.cz) | 7.2% |
The gap between 27.6% and 14.2% is mostly a measurement choice. A crawler that stops at the first response sees only 45.9% return a clean 200; follow the redirects and read the bodies, and 71.9% are alive. Here is where every first response ends up.
| 200 OK → Alive | 4,584,611 (46.3%) |
| 3xx redirect → Alive | 2,677,304 (27%) |
| No response → Dead | 1,413,013 (14.3%) |
| 403 / 429 → Blocked | 410,511 (4.1%) |
| 3xx redirect → Blocked | 365,368 (3.7%) |
| 404 → Alive | 236,685 (2.4%) |
| No response → Blocked | 105,222 (1.1%) |
| 5xx → Alive | 85,728 (0.9%) |
| 3xx redirect → Redirect | 31,267 (0.3%) |
| 3xx redirect → Dead | 1,775 (0%) |
Split the 10 million by popularity and the dead rate climbs more than 20× — from 0.8% in the top 1,000 to 16.1% past rank 5 million — while blocked runs the other way, peaking at the popular head.
99.8% of dead domains sit below rank 100,000. The popular top-100K — where most web traffic lives — is only 2.2% dead, so weighted by attention the dead web nearly disappears:
share of the top 10M that are dead
the popular top-100K is only 2.2% dead
The same figures behind the charts above, as plain HTML tables — easy to copy, and machine-readable for search engines and AI answer engines that can't parse a chart.
| TLD | Domains | Dead | Dead % |
|---|---|---|---|
| .com | 4,403,688 | 563,545 | 12.8% |
| .org | 878,764 | 114,092 | 13% |
| .io | 363,234 | 10,113 | 2.8% |
| .de | 348,251 | 26,446 | 7.6% |
| .net | 347,414 | 69,151 | 19.9% |
| .ru | 301,639 | 44,780 | 14.8% |
| .jp | 253,187 | 39,563 | 15.6% |
| .uk | 244,776 | 37,525 | 15.3% |
| .fr | 135,021 | 19,567 | 14.5% |
| .edu | 128,968 | 28,357 | 22% |
| .it | 107,638 | 14,564 | 13.5% |
| .ca | 106,814 | 15,023 | 14.1% |
| .br | 99,202 | 20,693 | 20.9% |
| .au | 92,764 | 13,883 | 15% |
| .nl | 86,383 | 8,400 | 9.7% |
| .pl | 70,063 | 9,212 | 13.1% |
| .es | 67,984 | 11,305 | 16.6% |
| .eu | 67,354 | 10,582 | 15.7% |
| .ch | 64,850 | 6,350 | 9.8% |
| .in | 63,614 | 16,442 | 25.8% |
| .info | 61,440 | 17,362 | 28.3% |
| .co | 60,670 | 9,264 | 15.3% |
| .cz | 53,177 | 3,853 | 7.2% |
| .app | 48,858 | 2,054 | 4.2% |
| .se | 46,523 | 5,398 | 11.6% |
| .gov | 43,435 | 11,251 | 25.9% |
| .at | 43,092 | 3,696 | 8.6% |
| .cn | 42,827 | 14,144 | 33% |
| .us | 41,645 | 9,146 | 22% |
| .me | 39,043 | 5,501 | 14.1% |
| Failure reason | Domains |
|---|---|
| ok | 7,195,864 |
| dns_failed | 1,027,492 |
| timeout | 441,714 |
| forbidden | 441,603 |
| not_found | 294,610 |
| tls_error | 192,304 |
| server_error | 128,756 |
| rate_limited | 86,240 |
| connection_error | 75,364 |
| client_error | 38,180 |
| redirect | 18,761 |
| connection_refused | 17,453 |
| too_many_redirects | 12,537 |
| auth_required | 9,527 |
| connection_reset | 6,879 |
| anti_bot | 5,154 |
| unavailable_legal | 330 |
| Outcome | Domains |
|---|---|
| alive | 7,657,422 |
| dead | 1,412,544 |
| blocked | 891,517 |
| redirect | 31,298 |
Search, filter by outcome, switch the probe arm, and sort. The full dataset is on GitHub. Click a domain to see how each arm fared.
| Rank | Domain | Outcome | Reason | Status | Final URL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3,701 | www.medicalnewstoday.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/ |
| 3,702 | www.post-gazette.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.post-gazette.com |
| 3,703 | girlswhocode.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://girlswhocode.com |
| 3,704 | www.dnb.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.dnb.com/en-us/ |
| 3,705 | www.eventbrite.com.au | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.eventbrite.com.au |
| 3,706 | www.france.tv | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.france.tv |
| 3,707 | www.opensearch.org | Alive | ok | 200 | https://opensearch.org/ |
| 3,708 | www.artsy.net | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.artsy.net |
| 3,709 | www.tinkercad.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.tinkercad.com |
| 3,710 | www.lockheedmartin.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.lockheedmartin.com |
| 3,711 | donate.wikimedia.org | Alive | ok | 200 | https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LandingPage&country=XX&wmf_medium=spontaneous&wmf_source=fr-redir&wmf_campaign=spontaneous |
| 3,712 | www.nperf.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.nperf.com/en/ |
| 3,713 | writesonic.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://writesonic.com |
| 3,714 | www.babbel.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.babbel.com |
| 3,715 | crates.io | Alive | not_found | 404 | https://crates.io |
| 3,716 | framework.zend.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://framework.zend.com |
| 3,717 | www.bitchute.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.bitchute.com |
| 3,718 | www.medicare.gov | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.medicare.gov |
| 3,719 | www.bahn.de | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.bahn.de |
| 3,720 | sensortower.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://sensortower.com |
| 3,721 | web.cvent.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://web.cvent.com |
| 3,722 | www.macobserver.com | Blocked | forbidden | 403 | https://www.macobserver.com |
| 3,723 | www.ycombinator.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.ycombinator.com:443/ |
| 3,724 | www.commerce.gov | Blocked | forbidden | 403 | https://www.commerce.gov |
| 3,725 | dmarc.org | Alive | ok | 200 | https://dmarc.org |
| 3,726 | www.ahajournals.org | Blocked | forbidden | 403 | https://www.ahajournals.org |
| 3,727 | support.garmin.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://support.garmin.com/en-US/ |
| 3,728 | www.afr.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.afr.com |
| 3,729 | graphql.org | Alive | ok | 200 | https://graphql.org |
| 3,730 | www.23andme.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.23andme.com |
| 3,731 | mustache.github.io | Alive | ok | 200 | https://mustache.github.io |
| 3,732 | www.unibo.it | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.unibo.it/it |
| 3,733 | www.imperial.ac.uk | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.imperial.ac.uk |
| 3,734 | jsonlint.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://jsonlint.com |
| 3,735 | inkscape.org | Alive | ok | 200 | https://inkscape.org |
| 3,736 | cooking.nytimes.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://cooking.nytimes.com |
| 3,737 | pin.it | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.pinterest.com/ |
| 3,738 | www.youronlinechoices.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.youronlinechoices.com |
| 3,739 | docs.joinmastodon.org | Alive | ok | 200 | https://docs.joinmastodon.org |
| 3,740 | developers.pinterest.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://developers.pinterest.com |
| 3,741 | icomoon.io | Alive | ok | 200 | https://icomoon.io/ |
| 3,742 | www.crazyegg.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.crazyegg.com |
| 3,743 | fullfact.org | Alive | ok | 200 | https://fullfact.org |
| 3,744 | www.tencent.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.tencent.com |
| 3,745 | www.washingtonexaminer.com | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.washingtonexaminer.com |
| 3,746 | www.are.na | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.are.na |
| 3,747 | www.x.org | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.x.org |
| 3,748 | www.rfs.nsw.gov.au | Blocked | forbidden | 403 | https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au |
| 3,749 | www.ynet.co.il | Alive | ok | 200 | https://www.ynet.co.il/home/0,7340,L-8,00.html |
| 3,750 | www.scimagojr.com | Blocked | forbidden | 403 | https://www.scimagojr.com |
We probe a top-popularity domain list HTTPS-first from a datacenter IP, following redirects, and label each domain alive, redirect, blocked, or dead by the evidence the probe captures — a final HTTP status, or a transport error plus whether a raw TCP connect still succeeds. A served 404, a 5xx, or a Cloudflare 52x is alive (the host answered); a 403/429 or anti-bot challenge is blocked; only no DNS, a refused/reset connection, or nothing accepting a connection is dead. Every domain is probed twice — as a polite bot and as a browser-like client (real Chrome TLS/JA3) — and the full per-domain dataset is open.
This measures whether the domain itself still resolves and answers — a different question from Pew Research’s 2024 link-rot study (25% of pages from 2013–2023 are gone; 38% of 2013 pages) and Ahrefs’ link-rot study (66.5% of links have rotted), which measure broken links insideliving pages. It is also not the “dead internet theory” — that is a claim about AI-generated content, not domain reachability.
Cite this
Crawlora (2026). Dead-Web Index 2026. 14.1% of 9,992,781 top domains are genuinely dead; 8.9% answer but block automated clients. https://crawlora.net/dead-web-index.
14.1% of the top 9,992,781 domains are genuinely dead — about 1,412,544 sites that no longer resolve in DNS or refuse every connection. That is far below the often-quoted "27.6% of the web is dead," which counted anti-bot blocks and answered errors as death.
A dead site never answers — no DNS record, or nothing accepts a TCP connection. A blocked site is alive and answering, it just refuses an automated client (a 403, 429, or anti-bot challenge). 8.9% of the top web (891,517 sites) is blocked, not dead — a distinction naive crawlers miss.
No. The dead internet theory is a claim that AI-generated content and bots have replaced human activity on the living web. This index measures the opposite and concrete thing: how many domains have gone completely dark and unreachable — DNS gone, connection refused, server gone.
Earlier top-10M crawls counted three non-dead things as dead: anti-bot 403/429 blocks, 404/5xx pages served by a live server, and domains a single flaky DNS resolver failed to look up. Classifying honestly — dead means genuinely unreachable — brings the real figure to 14.1%.
.cn has the highest death rate among common TLDs at 33%. Institutional TLDs like .gov and .edu also rank high — matching Pew Research's finding that government and reference pages suffer the worst link rot.
Anti-bot systems (Cloudflare, DataDome, and others) serve a 403 or a challenge to a datacenter IP while letting a real browser through. A matched browser TLS/JA3 fingerprint reaches the site where a naive bot is blocked — which is exactly why this index probes every domain twice, as a polite bot and as a browser-like client.
8.9% of the top web answers but blocks a naive bot. Crawlora escalates from a plain request to a real browser fingerprint only as far as a site demands, and bills on success — so you reach the live web that the 14.1% genuine dead doesn’t include.
| informational |
| 12 |
| unknown | 1 |