A Stochastic Model for the Evolution of the Web Allowing Link Deletion

TL;DR

This paper introduces a stochastic web evolution model that incorporates link deletion, revealing its impact on the power-law distribution of inlinks and enabling estimation of link deletion probability.

Contribution

It generalizes existing models by including link deletion, providing insights into web graph inlink distributions and estimating deletion probabilities.

Findings

Power-law distribution persists with link deletion

Estimated power-law exponent is approximately 2.15

Model can detect and quantify link deletion in web graphs

Abstract

Recently several authors have proposed stochastic evolutionary models for the growth of the web graph and other networks that give rise to power-law distributions. These models are based on the notion of preferential attachment leading to the ``rich get richer'' phenomenon. We present a generalisation of the basic model by allowing deletion of individual links and show that it also gives rise to a power-law distribution. We derive the mean-field equations for this stochastic model and show that by examining a snapshot of the distribution at the steady state of the model, we are able to tell whether any link deletion has taken place and estimate the link deletion probability. Our model enables us to gain some insight into the distribution of inlinks in the web graph, in particular it suggests a power-law exponent of approximately 2.15 rather than the widely published exponent of 2.1.