Link Rot for Resources at the Government Domain Level

The Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group is releasing the results of its fourth annual analysis of link rot among the original URLs for law- and policy-related materials published to the Web and archived by the Chesapeake Group. The analysis also explores the prevalence of link rot among top-level domains.

For this study, the term "link rot" is used to describe a URL that no longer provides direct access to files matching the content originally harvested from the URL and currently preserved in the Chesapeake Group's digital archive. In some instances, a 404 or "not found" message indicates link rot at a URL. In other cases, the URL may direct to a site hosted by the original publishing organization or entity, but the specific resource has been removed or relocated from the original or previous URL.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat