Link Rot: Why your Digital Links won’t last forever

Unfortunately, link deterioration, often called link rot, is inevitable. Here are some effective strategies for managing its impact on online content.

by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

Just about everyone runs into this scenario. You click on a link on a page or post only to get a “404 Not Found” message on the other side instead of the info that you were hoping for. In some cases this is just a typing mistake made during link creation, but if the page you’re trying to access is more than 5 years old, chances are it’s suffering from what’s known as “link rot.”

Link rot is defined as a page that’s no linger accessible. This may be because the page no longer exists on its host server, or the host server itself no longer exists. Sometimes the page still exists but the info has changed, sometimes dramatically. Believe it or not, this condition is now running rampant throughout the online world.

Don’t believe me? The Pew Research Center analysis of nearly a million random pages found:

• A quarter of all webpages that existed at one point between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible, as of October 2023. In most cases, this is because an individual page was deleted or removed on an otherwise functional website.
• 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are not available today, compared with 8% of pages that existed in 2023.
• 23% of news webpages contain at least one broken link. 
• 21% of webpages from government sites contain at least one broken link.
• 54% of Wikipedia pages contain at least one link in their “References” section that points to a page that no longer exists.
• Nearly one-in-five tweets are no longer publicly visible on the site just months after being posted. In 60% of these cases, the account that originally posted the tweet was made private, suspended or deleted entirely. In the other 40%, the account holder deleted the individual tweet, but the account itself still existed.
• Certain types of tweets tend to go away more often than others. More than 40% of tweets written in Turkish or Arabic are no longer visible on the site within three months of being posted. And tweets from accounts with the default profile settings are especially likely to disappear from public view.

While this is at the very least annoying to one’s everyday online life, you’re probably wondering how this directly affects anyone in the music business. It’s important to check all the links on your site, profiles or wikipedia page whenever you do an update because a broken link of any kind can lessen you’re personal and social authority, something that’s required to remain a trustworthy partner or content provider.

It’s true that the pages you link to are beyond your control. They change, come and go at the content owner’s whim. The one thing you can control is not sending anyone to something that you’re not 100% confident of.

You can read a lot more about link rot on the Pew study page.

Bobby Owsinski is a producer/engineer, author, blogger, podcaster, and coach. He has authored 24 books on music production, music, the music business, music AI, and social media.