aristotle - 1:30 pm on Mar 20, 2012 (gmt 0)

Thanks for all the replies. Actually I wasn't thinking about my own websites. I was just curious about old sites I sometimes come across that apparently no longer have a caretaker, and as a result have a lot of broken external outlinks. The old articles on these sites, written years ago, may still have value, and may still deserve a high ranking. So my question is how much do the broken external links hurt their rankings.