Recheck outbound links, things change

15 percent gone or gone bad... a new record!

[ken_b]

I recheck outbound links from my site in what I thought was a fairly safe time frame, every few months or so.

So the other day I started the process again. For the most part I do this manually, visiting every site to make sure the link is still live and goes to the site and content that was there when I first made the link.

There's always a few links that have gone 404 or changed in some other way, so they get the boot of course.

This time it's a huge number, about 15% of all the links I've checked this time ar getting deleted.

Most of the links getting the boot have been around, and good for over 3 years, some as old as 7 years.

OK, things change.

The real shocker, to me, is the number of relatively new links that have changed, gone 404, etc. Some are only 3 - 4 months old.

Still, the 15% seems really high to me.

Is that a % that others find frequently?

[jsinger]

We have a fairly hidden "directory" page on our main commerce site with links to about 200 mostly small competitors. I use it to check trends in our field. It also brings in a bit of search engine traffic to us. Our link mortality has been lower in recent months. But fewer new sites are launching.

There are always a few sites that shut down quickly once the newbie owner learns the web isn't the pot of gold he hoped. We lose <2% of our links every 3-4 months.

[piatkow]

Missing sites are easy enough to catch programatically. The problem I have in the music business is the number of sites that just go dormant. Bands switch to MySpace and forget the old site, the webmaster leaves the band and nobody takes over, etc etc.

[Rosalind]

It really depends on the types of links you add in the first place, the topic, and so on. I try not to link to anyone who hasn't paid for a domain name, because free pages have a very high die-off rate.

Having a lot of new links changed could mean that you are being targeted for bait and switch techniques, or it may just be a reflection of the economy. Domain prices have risen, so a lot of people may have decided that the money they spend on their hobby sites is no longer worthwhile.