Webmasters, site managers and developers who use LinkAlarm categorize their sites for anonymous comparison with the LinkQuality Benchmark. Web site information is held together by hyperlinks. These links point to the files necessary for displaying images, getting to other pages and other sites. When web links fail you'll see broken images and strange error messages as you use the site. Increasing link failure over time is known as link rot .
Links fail for many reasons.
The most common is the 404 - File Not Found . It occurs when the file being linked to is moved or deleted. Developers of web sites often link to files on other web sites, but they're not informed when those sites change. Link problems also creep in during site development, and often occur with e-commerce systems. If you're maintaining a high quality site it's important to monitor your links.