Patent ID: 7818312

Claim:
A signal-bearing medium tangibly embodying a program of machine-readable instructions executable by a digital processing apparatus of a computer system to perform operations for assessing the currency of a web page, the operations comprising: establishing a link threshold, wherein a web page will be assessed as lacking currency if a percentage of hyperlinks contained in the web page that link to an active page is less than the link threshold; accessing a web page containing hyperlinks; testing the hyperlinks, wherein testing the hyperlinks comprises: selecting one of the hyperlinks; saving a web page returned in response to following the selected hyperlink; formulating a web page request to a host of the selected hyperlink, where the web page request is of a form that will not return an active web page with a high degree of probability; saving a web page returned in response to the web page request; comparing the web page returned in response to the web page request to the web page returned in response to the following the selected hyperlink; and assessing the selected hyperlink as linking to a dead web page if the web page returned in response to following the selected hyperlink is identical to the web page returned in response to the web page request; calculating a percentage of hyperlinks that return active web pages; and comparing the percentage of hyperlinks that return active web pages with the link threshold.