Government web archive gets one billion hits

12 July 2011

A website providing a record of 40 terabytes worth of government web presence since 1997 has been re-designed to make it more accessible and easier to navigate.

The UK Government Web Archive, hosted by the National Archives, has now received more than one billion hits since it was launched in 2003, making the site one of the most visited in government.

Providing a complete digital record of the government's online presence, the site contains announcements, press notices, briefings, web chats, speeches, statements and e-petitions, and contains more than a billion archived pages from more than 2,000 government websites.

"In the digital age, government chooses to communicate its messages to the public through the web," said Oliver Morley chief executive of the National Archives.

"Without the UK Government Web Archive, there is a risk these important records would disappear completely, leaving a black hole for researchers of the future.

"The billion pages of digital material in the archive are an important part of our country's historical and cultural inheritance and deserving of the same respect we show paper records."

The site is now said to be around eight times the size of the English-language Wikipedia and is currently growing at a rate of one terabyte every month.

This level of growth was said to be in "no small part" due to the number of websites closing as part of the government's website review.