What is "Link Rot"?

Koehler, W. (2004). "A longitudinal study of Web pages continued: A consideration of document persistence." Information Research, 9(2), paper 174. Available Online

Link Rot refers to the gradual process by which hyperlinks on the web become broken or inaccessible over time. This occurs when the web pages they point to are moved, deleted, or altered, leaving the original link unable to retrieve the intended content. The phenomenon highlights the fragility of the web as an information system — while it enables rapid publication and access, it lacks long-term stability. As websites are redesigned, reorganized, or shut down, the URLs that once pointed to valuable resources frequently stop working, resulting in missing information, dead ends, and incomplete records.

Researchers began systematically studying link rot in the late 1990s, most notably through the work of William Koehler, who documented the persistence and decay of web pages over time. Koehler’s longitudinal studies revealed that a significant percentage of web links become invalid within just a few years of publication. Follow-up research by others, including Diomidis Spinellis (2003), confirmed this pattern across disciplines, showing that even academic and government sites — which might be expected to maintain stable URLs — are not immune to link decay. These findings underscore that link rot is a systemic issue, not limited to any one domain of the web.

The implications of link rot are particularly serious in scholarly communication, law, and public policy. When research articles, legal opinions, or government documents rely on web-based citations, the disappearance of these sources undermines the reliability and verifiability of the record. For example, a legal decision that references a web page may become difficult to interpret years later if that page no longer exists. To address this problem, initiatives like Perma.cc and the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine have emerged to preserve the content of cited web pages, ensuring that readers can still access a snapshot of the referenced material even if the original link fails.

Beyond academic and legal contexts, link rot also poses challenges for cultural preservation and historical research. The web serves as a vast and evolving record of contemporary life, yet its impermanence means that large portions of this record can disappear silently. As a result, archivists and information scientists advocate for proactive digital preservation strategies, including the use of persistent identifiers (like DOIs), institutional repositories, and web archiving systems. Addressing link rot thus requires both technical and institutional solutions — recognizing that the web’s strength in immediacy must be balanced by a commitment to long-term accessibility and integrity.