Best Way to Handle External Dead Links?

[JesterMagic]

I have articles in my blog that are several years old and some of them have links to external content that does not exist anymore. This linked content is usually a link to a news related item or is used as a source to a quote or other information.

What is the best way to handle these dead links?

Obviously if my content is not relevant any more I can delete my content. In most instances this is not the case.

Should I remove the link but add some sort of message or tooltip saying something like "Linked Source Content No Longer Available" to show we once linked to the site.

Also does anyone have any recommendations of a good free link checking software to check the external links found on my site?

[Wilburforce]

1. Remove them, and edit the content as though the link had never existed.
2. Xenu's Link Sleuth.

[aristotle]

Xenu's Link Sleuth

I still like old Xenu better than some of the newer ones. But none of these link-checking tools are foolproof. For example, they might not flag a hosting company's parked page. The only sure way to find all broken links is to check them manually.

[Wilburforce]

For example, they might not flag a hosting company's parked page.

They won't find anything that returns a 200, and if the content of the target page has changed it may be frustrating for anyone following the link, so I agree that it is best to do a manual audit periodically.

If the scale of that task is too big to do it manually, you might want to consider culling external links.

[seoskunk]

I have a few websites you could point those links at... :)

[tangor]

On research based articles on my sites (where it counts to do so) there is a disclaimer at the bottom that says "At the time of publication links to off site resources were active. Given the volatile nature of web sites these links may become inactive. Please report any broken links to [e-mail]"

I think there might have been as many as three reported broken links over a 10 year period.

What does this say? A) The user doesn't use or follow the links B) It makes no difference C) Too much work for the user

I do test links on the most important article, otherwise I don't worry about it. On the other hand, I don't link out all that often unless I know that resource is stable, authoritative and will be there in the future.

Links matter, it is one of the key features of the web ... but I don't believe they matter as much as they once did. I'm more inclined to believe that links TO my sites from bad actors has more negative value than any links from positive value actors.

[lucy24]

This is where script-based analytics come in handy. Get in the habit of checking periodically to see where people go when leaving your site. You'll probably find there are some links they really do investigate, and others that might as well not exist.

For analytics purposes, it makes no difference whether there is a viable page at the far end of your link. The only information you're getting is whether anyone clicked on it in the first place. If nobody has clicked on a given link in the past year, and it leads to something that's now defunct, you can safely remove the link and think no more about it. (This part obviously depends on how elegantly your links are worded in the first place. If links <a href = "http://www.example.com/">arise naturally</a> out of your text,* you needn't change a word, just remove the link itself.) But if lots of people are clicking on something and ending up nowhere, you should do something about it.

Make sure people can figure out how to report bad links if they feel like it-- but don't rely on visitors to keep you informed. The vast majority of people won't; it simply won't occur to them. But make sure you acknowledge the ones that do, or they won't bother to tell you when they find another bad link next week.


* That was supposed to have been a link in [ url ] format, but the Forums suddenly decided they'd never heard of the URL markup and refused to cooperate, so I went with Option B.