  This paper maps the national UK web presence on the basis of an analysis of
the .uk domain from 1996 to 2010. It reviews previous attempts to use web
archives to understand national web domains and describes the dataset. Next, it
presents an analysis of the .uk domain, including the overall number of links
in the archive and changes in the link density of different second-level
domains over time. We then explore changes over time within a particular
second-level domain, the academic subdomain .ac.uk, and compare linking
practices with variables, including institutional affiliation, league table
ranking, and geographic location. We do not detect institutional affiliation
affecting linking practices and find only partial evidence of league table
ranking affecting network centrality, but find a clear inverse relationship
between the density of links and the geographical distance between
universities. This echoes prior findings regarding offline academic activity,
which allows us to argue that real-world factors like geography continue to
shape academic relationships even in the Internet age. We conclude with
directions for future uses of web archive resources in this emerging area of
research.
