No More Broken Links?

from the who-needs-'em? dept

Some student interns at IBM have apparently come up with a system for discovering and fixing broken links. While systems that check links and alert you if they've changed have been around for a while (with varying degrees of usefulness), this one also tries to figure out where the existing page moved to or if it can find an equivalent page of information -- and makes the change automatically (sometimes first asking for permission). What might be interesting is if they hooked this system up to the Web Archive. While it looks targeted at intranet usage, it would be great for the rest of the web as well. Imagine that as soon as a page goes down, the system either finds the same version elsewhere on that site, or shifts the link to the Web Archive version.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    Mikester, 24 Sep 2004 @ 9:53am

    Google?

    Now it's starting to make sense. We've read about the rumored Google browser - what if they are having the same thoughts? No more linkrot - broken links could either go to Google's cached page or if it doesn't exist, maybe a search results page? Now that's a browser I would run.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.