It's designed as an automated service, so the maintainer of the web site doesn't have to do anything to have regular quality checks. Each report rates the site with a score out of 100 and a link failure rate, so it's easy to see if attention is required.
While many of us are site developers, all of us are site users. I know how frustrated I get when a site I'm using gives me bad links. It doesn't take too many to make me go somewhere else, to a better maintained site. In fact the recent Georgia Tech web user survey reports broken links as the second worst problem on the web, right behind slow loading pages. It's often quoted that a useful site provides links to other related sites - that's the power of the web. Unfortunately, there's no mechanism for site developers to be notified when the pages they point to on other sites are moved or deleted. You have to check all your own links to make sure they work.
Don't have any links on your site :-) No, really the best preventative is to check them regularly. If you're linking to other sites, try not to point to individual pages - point to the top of the server if you can.
We report 43 different alarm types including FTP problems, DNS errors, timeouts, redirections and of course the notorious 404 File Not Found. LinkAlarm finds "file://" links that have been mistakenly inserted during site development. The LinkReport also includes a list of email addresses and secure servers used on the site.
That really depends on how often you change your pages. Most of our members check their sites every month, but some have LinkReports running weekly and even daily. Also, sites with a large number of external links (to other sites) need more frequent checking. We find most people take a couple of weeks to get their sites to a score of 100 (all links checked report no alarms), so then it's just a matter of keeping an eye on the summary emails.
The most common cause of link failure is when the page you're pointing to is moved or deleted. Unless you have a special relationship with the remote site, you're never notified of the change. The first you hear about it is when one of your readers complain you have a broken link. Users get annoyed with broken links. They expect the links on a site to work, and if they don't you might lose a customer. However, relying on users to tell you about breakages isn't very good. The damage is already done.
No, LinkAlarm doesn't fix your broken links because we don't have access to your HTML source files. But we do all the work of finding which pages have bad links, presenting the information so it's easy to get in and fix them.
The plug-in works with the LinkReport, letting you jump stright to your HTML source file to fix the problem. We developed it to help site maintainers get to the right file quickly. Wading through your files looking for the corresponding page can add a lot of time to the repair process. With the plug-in, one click and you've opened the page in your favorite HTML editor.
Our Test Drive is the best way to try out LinkAlarm on your own site for free. It's a mini-membership for two months which includes two LinkReports on up to 200 pages. All the features of the service are available so you know exactly what to expect. We think it's important for internet services to be really great value with no hidden traps. After the test drive, membership is only $20 a year for monthy checking.
The web is such a wonderful thing for sharing information between publishers. Being able to link to another site is really powerful and can increase the value of your site, but it's a shame there was no in-built mechanism to maintain the links. We're having a lot of success filling this need for link checking -- our test drivers and members are great at giving us feedback on the service. The great thing about our online model is we can upgrade the service and everybody gets the benefits right away - no updater to download or install. I think web applications have a big future replacing desktop applications. Did you know there are over 10,000 new domains registered EVERY DAY? I find this absolutely incredible!
I would like to tell everyone that I use LinkAlarm. I subscribed recently and found out the I had 14 problems (I had about 8 broken links). My site is not large; I only have about 50 pages. And, as you might expect, I spend quite a bit of time looking for these kinds of problems. I still can't believe it...14 problems!
Take advantage of the free LinkAlarm test drive! - John (This interview was conducted via email by John S. Rhodes) |
