Webring

A webring (or web ring) is a collection of websites linked together in a circular structure, and usually organized around a specific theme, often educational or social.^[1] They were popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, particularly among amateur websites.

To be a part of the webring, each site has a common navigation bar; it contains links to the previous and next sites. By selecting next (or previous) repeatedly, the user will eventually reach the site they started at; this is the origin of the term webring. However, the select-through route around the ring is usually supplemented by a central site with links to all member sites; this prevents the ring from breaking completely if a member site goes offline. A webring is managed from one website which is able to omit the websites that have dropped out or are no longer reachable. The advantage of a webring is that if the user is interested in the topic on one website, they can quickly connect to another website on the same topic.^[2] Webrings usually have a moderator who decides which pages to include in the webring. After approval, webmasters add their pages to the ring by 'linking in' to the ring; this requires adding the necessary HTML or JavaScript to their site.

Sites usually join a webring in order to receive traffic from related sites. When used to improve search engine rankings, webrings can be considered a search engine optimization technique.

Webrings are mainly viewed as a relic of the early web of the 1990s.^[3] When the primary site that managed web rings, webring.org was acquired by Yahoo, "ring masters" lost access to their webrings^[3] and the web ring hubs were replaced by a Yahoo page.^[3] By the time Yahoo stopped controlling webring.org in 2001, search engines had become good enough that web rings were no longer as useful.^[3] The webring.org site was still active in the mid-2010s.^[3]