Time to check your outbound links?

Link rot and more.

[ken_b]

I just ran through about 950 outbound links on my site to check them for changes, etc.

WOW!

I do this every few months, and have for years. This time there were a lot more deletions. There were more than the usual number of plain old 404s, and a surprising number of "re-purposed and/or re-targeted" sites.

A significant number of pages now showed what I guess was Chinese text.

In all, I deleted around 90 links.

For the first time I found a significant number of sites that had switched from a .com to a .net or .org etc, about 50 changes of that nature. (These are separate from the deletions)

.

[g1smd]

You should certainly check outgoing links on a regular basis.

Using Xenu Linksleuth, or something like it, can show links that have gone 404 or which redirect - as well as domains that are no longer registered.

Finding links that have been repurposed is a lot harder. You should also investigate such links both with and without sending a referrer.