Examination Summary

The Office of Digital Preservation has completed a field examination of the Million Dollar Homepage, recorded by the Forgotten Web Exchange as FWX-000001.

The resource remains publicly accessible at its historical network location and continues to present the pixel canvas for which it became known during 2005 and 2006.

Its continued accessibility, however, does not constitute complete preservation of the historical experience.

The Million Dollar Homepage incorporates a large collection of outbound links within its principal visual structure. Those links connected purchased areas of the pixel canvas to external websites selected by their purchasers.

As external resources have disappeared, moved, changed ownership or been replaced, portions of that linked environment have ceased to represent the network context in which the object originally operated.

The Bureau therefore distinguishes between preservation of the Million Dollar Homepage itself and preservation of the wider network of resources upon which part of its historical function depended.

The examination finds that the primary Digital Object remains accessible and visually well preserved, while its linked network environment has undergone substantial documented degradation.

1. Object Under Examination

The object under examination is the Million Dollar Homepage, created by Alex Tew in 2005.

The resource was constructed around a 1,000 by 1,000 pixel advertising canvas, producing a total of one million pixels.

Advertising space was sold at a nominal price of one United States dollar per pixel, with purchases made in blocks rather than as individual isolated pixels.

Purchasers supplied graphical material for their allocated area and could associate that area with an external network location.

The result was simultaneously a commercial experiment, a visual composition and a large collection of links to other Web resources.

The final portion of the available pixel space was sold through an auction in early 2006.

For preservation purposes, the Bureau treats the pixel canvas, its associated links and the surrounding website as related components of the historical Digital Object.

2. Purpose of Examination

The Million Dollar Homepage is maintained in the Forgotten Web Exchange as an example of an active legacy website.

Its continued availability provides an opportunity to examine an important distinction in digital preservation:

persistence of presentation does not necessarily imply preservation of function.

A historical website may remain accessible at its original address and may retain much of its original visual appearance while dependencies beyond the immediate resource continue to change.

The present examination was therefore undertaken to assess:

• continued accessibility of the primary resource;
• persistence of its principal visual content;
• the historical role of outbound links within the object;
• documented degradation of those links;
• and the implications of that degradation for the Bureau’s preservation assessment.

3. Historical Structure

The central feature of the Million Dollar Homepage is its pixel canvas.

Advertising areas purchased within the canvas contain graphical material supplied by purchasers. Those graphical areas also functioned as links, directing visitors to external websites.

The canvas therefore served two functions.

It formed a visual record of the project and its participants.

It also acted as an interface to a wider collection of independently operated Web resources.

This second function is significant for preservation.

The graphical material could remain unchanged while the destination associated with a graphical area disappeared or changed completely.

Consequently, the visible canvas and the network environment represented by that canvas may deteriorate at different rates.

4. Current Accessibility

At the time of the present examination, the Million Dollar Homepage remains publicly accessible at:

https://milliondollarhomepage.com/

The principal pixel canvas remains available.

The site continues to identify the resource with Alex Tew and the year 2005, and the visual character of the principal page remains recognisable when compared with surviving historical representations.

The Bureau therefore finds that the primary network location remains operational and continues to provide access to the historical resource.

This finding concerns accessibility of the primary object.

It does not establish that every component, linked destination or historical interaction remains functional.

5. Historical Visual Evidence

Surviving representations from 2005 provide evidence of the Million Dollar Homepage during its original period of operation.

Comparison between historical representations and the currently accessible resource demonstrates substantial persistence of the principal visual composition.

The pixel canvas remains especially important in this respect.

Unlike many historical Web resources whose visual presentation has been substantially redesigned, replaced or removed, the Million Dollar Homepage continues to expose a recognisable version of its defining visual artifact.

The Bureau therefore considers visual continuity of the principal canvas to be strong.

Visual continuity must nevertheless be distinguished from functional continuity.

6. The Linked Environment

The outbound links associated with the pixel canvas were not incidental navigation added around the historical object.

They were part of the mechanism through which purchased pixel areas operated.

A visitor could identify a graphical area and follow it to the purchaser’s selected destination.

The meaning of an individual pixel block therefore derived partly from its appearance and partly from the external resource to which it directed the visitor.

Those external resources were not controlled by the Million Dollar Homepage.

Their continued existence depended upon separate domain registrations, hosting arrangements, organisations, individuals and technical systems.

The object consequently incorporated dependencies distributed across the public Web.

7. Documented Link Decay

In 2017, the Library Innovation Lab at Harvard Law School published an examination of link decay affecting the Million Dollar Homepage.

That examination identified 2,816 links embedded in the page, associated with 999,400 pixels.

Of those links, 547 were reported as unreachable at the time of the study.

A further 489 redirected to a different domain or to a domain resale service.

The study therefore reported 1,780 links as reachable, while also observing that many reachable destinations no longer represented their apparent original purpose.

The 547 unreachable links corresponded to graphical areas occupying 342,000 pixels.

Redirecting links accounted for a further 145,000 pixels.

These measurements describe conditions observed in 2017.

They are retained by the Bureau as historical evidence and are not presented as measurements of current 2026 link availability.

8. Interpretation of the 2017 Evidence

The 2017 findings demonstrate that degradation of the Million Dollar Homepage’s network environment was already substantial approximately twelve years after the object was created.

Importantly, the degradation was not necessarily visible from inspection of the canvas alone.

An advertising graphic could remain present in its historical location even when the destination represented by that graphic was unavailable, reassigned or materially changed.

The visual surface of the object could therefore communicate an impression of stability while the network relationships encoded beneath that surface continued to decay.

For preservation purposes, the Bureau considers this distinction significant.

9. 2026 Verification

The present examination confirms continued accessibility of the primary Million Dollar Homepage and its principal pixel canvas.

The Bureau has not attempted to reproduce the complete 2017 link survey.

Accordingly, this report does not provide a new numerical estimate of the proportion of outbound links presently reachable in 2026.

Individual outbound destinations observed during examination continue to demonstrate the preservation problem documented in earlier research: the historical appearance of a linked area may persist independently from the condition or identity of its external destination.

The Bureau therefore records continued degradation of the linked environment as an established preservation concern while avoiding an unsupported current percentage or link count.

A comprehensive contemporary link survey may be undertaken as a separate technical examination.

10. Visual Integrity

The principal pixel canvas exhibits a high degree of visual persistence.

Its overall composition, graphical density and individual advertising areas remain recognisable in comparison with historical representations.

For researchers examining Web aesthetics, online advertising, viral culture or the visual character of the mid-2000s Web, this surviving presentation retains substantial evidentiary value.

The Bureau therefore assesses the visual integrity of the principal artifact as substantially preserved.

This assessment applies to visual presentation.

It does not imply equivalent preservation of linked destinations.

11. Functional Integrity

Functional integrity is more limited.

A principal historical function of the pixel canvas was to direct visitors from purchased graphical areas to external resources.

Where those resources are unavailable, reassigned or substantially changed, the corresponding historical interaction can no longer occur as originally intended.

A graphical area may therefore remain visually intact while being functionally degraded.

The Bureau considers this a form of partial functional loss rather than loss of the primary Digital Object.

12. Network Context

The Million Dollar Homepage demonstrates that a Web resource may depend upon other independently maintained resources for part of its historical meaning.

Preservation of the originating page cannot guarantee preservation of those dependencies.

This problem extends beyond the present case.

Directories, weblogs, portal pages, link collections, Web rings, search interfaces and other network-oriented Digital Objects may survive as individual resources while the external environment they describe or connect to disappears.

The Million Dollar Homepage provides an unusually visible example because the links are represented directly by persistent graphical areas.

The same preservation problem may be considerably less obvious in other historical resources.

13. Preservation Assessment

The Bureau records the following findings.

Primary resource accessibility: Confirmed.

The Million Dollar Homepage remains publicly accessible at its historical network location.

Principal visual artifact: Substantially preserved.

The defining pixel canvas remains available and retains strong visual continuity with historical representations.

Historical network function: Partially degraded.

The outbound links embedded within the canvas formed part of the historical operation of the resource.

Linked environment: Substantially degraded in documented historical assessment.

The 2017 Library Innovation Lab study established extensive link loss, redirection and destination change.

Current comprehensive link condition: Not measured.

The Bureau has not reproduced the complete historical link survey during the present examination.

Overall preservation condition: Primary object preserved with degradation of dependent network context.

14. Catalogue Action

FWX-000001 shall remain classified as an active legacy website.

Its continued accessibility at the historical network location remains verified.

The catalogue record should distinguish between accessibility of the primary resource and integrity of the external network relationships incorporated within it.

No change to the object’s historical identity is required.

Future preservation review should continue to consider both the visible artifact and its network dependencies.

15. Preservation Principle

The examination supports the following preservation principle:

Persistence of presentation does not necessarily imply preservation of function.

For networked Digital Objects, preservation assessment should consider not only whether the primary resource remains accessible, but whether external resources necessary to its historical operation remain available and represent the same objects to which the historical resource originally referred.

A resource may therefore exhibit strong visual preservation and simultaneous functional degradation.

16. Procedural Follow-Up

Existing Bureau procedures provide methods for determining whether legacy resources remain accessible and for recording their preservation condition.

The present examination identifies a related problem requiring more explicit technical treatment: preservation assessment of Digital Objects whose historical function depends substantially upon external network resources.

The Office of Digital Preservation therefore recommends preparation of technical guidance addressing:

• identification of network-dependent components;
• assessment of link decay;
• distinction between link availability and destination continuity;
• treatment of reassigned domains;
• use of archival representations of linked resources;
• and preservation status for objects whose primary resource survives while dependent resources do not.

Such guidance should complement TN-000001 and existing Bureau provenance procedures.

17. Disposition

The field examination is closed.

FWX-000001 remains under periodic preservation review as an active legacy website.

The Million Dollar Homepage demonstrates a condition in which preservation of a primary Web resource has substantially outlasted preservation of portions of the network environment to which that resource was connected.

The historical object has not disappeared.

Instead, part of the Web around it has.

That distinction shall be retained in future Bureau preservation assessments.

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Dr. Evelyn Rothen
Chief Preservation Officer
Office of Digital Preservation
Bureau of Digital Antiquities
1 October 2026