A hyperlink which is not functioning. A link which does not lead to the desired location.
Links may broken for a number of reason, but four of the most common reasons are
- a website going offline
- linking to content which is temporary in nature (due to licensing structures or other reasons)
- moving a page’s location
- changing a domain’s content management system
Most large websites have some broken links, but if too many of a site’s links are broken it may be an indication of outdated content, and it may provide website users with a poor user experience. Both of which may cause search engines to rank a page as being less relevant.
Xenu Link Sleuth is a free software program which crawls websites to find broken links.