# Link rot

Category: [Link Building & Off-Page](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/link-building-off-page/) › [Backlinks & link profile](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/link-building-off-page/backlinks-link-profile/)

**Link rot** is the gradual decay of hyperlinks over time. A link that once worked stops pointing to its original page, file or server because the target was moved, deleted or its domain expired. A single dead link is a broken link, while link rot describes how links decay across the web or across one site.

## How does link rot happen?

Wikipedia lists the usual causes. Sites are restructured and URL paths change, servers fail, domains expire or are transferred, content moves behind a paywall, or a firewall blocks access. The visible result is usually an HTTP 404 error.

The Pew Research Center measured the scale in 2024 using pages from the Common Crawl archive. By October 2023, 38 percent of pages from 2013 were no longer accessible, compared with 8 percent of pages from 2023. Across all pages collected between 2013 and 2023, 25 percent had disappeared. On news sites, 23 percent of pages contained at least one broken link, and on government sites the figure was 21 percent.

## Why it matters for site owners

Two directions are worth separating. A rotting outbound link sends your visitors to an error page. If your own URL disappears, every link pointing to it from other sites ends at an error page as well, so that reference no longer leads anyone to your content.

## Example

An article from 2019 links to a study. In 2022 the publisher redesigns its site and the old address now answers like this:

```
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
```

The article itself is unchanged and still online, but the link in it has rotted.

## What reduces link rot

- Crawl your own site regularly and check outgoing links for error status codes.
- Redirect old URLs to the closest matching new page with a 301 when you change them. Google recommends a permanent server-side redirect for changed URLs whenever possible.
- Link to stable sources such as primary documents instead of short-lived intermediate pages.
- Archive important sources, for example with the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

## FAQ

**What is a dead link?** A link whose target no longer responds with usable content, most often with a 404 error.

**How can I avoid link rot?** Keep URLs stable, redirect changed ones and check links on a schedule.

## Related terms

- [Broken link](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/broken-link/index.md)
- [404 error](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/404-error/index.md)
- [301 redirect](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/301-redirect/index.md)
- [Backlink](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/backlink/index.md)
- [Lost backlinks](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/lost-backlinks/index.md)
- [Link reclamation](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/link-reclamation/index.md)

## Sources

- [When Online Content Disappears – Pew Research Center (May 17, 2024)](https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/)
- [Link rot – Wikipedia (secondary)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot)
- [Redirects and Google Search – Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/301-redirects)

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Last updated: October 7, 2026
URL: https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/link-rot/