Link rot

The rate of link rot is a subject of study and research due to its significance to the internet's ability to preserve information.

Information professionals have warned that link rot could make important archival data disappear, potentially impacting the legal system and scholarship.

[4] A 2004 study showed that subsets of Web links (such as those targeting specific file types or those hosted by academic institutions) could have dramatically different half-lives.

A 2015 study by Weblock analyzed more than 180,000 links from references in the full-text corpora of three major open access publishers and found a half-life of about 14 years,[6] generally confirming a 2005 study that found that half of the URLs cited in D-Lib Magazine articles were active 10 years after publication.

[7] Other studies have found higher rates of link rot in academic literature but typically suggest a half-life of four years or greater.

As far back as 1999, it was noted that with the amount of material that can be stored on a hard drive, "a single disk failure could be like the burning of the library at Alexandria.

Automated methods include plug-ins for content management systems as well as standalone broken-link checkers such as like Xenu's Link Sleuth.