I hate following a link on site and getting messages like this:
//Article not found
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I'd like a program that, when you load a page, automatically detects and follows each link on the page. Any that don't turn up results are visibly marked so you know it's dead before you waste time clicking on it. At the same time, a message is sent to the site's administrator requesting that the link be removed or updated. If a link that was previously marked as dead has been updated or restored, then it is marked differently.-- 21 Quest, Dec 09 2006 Greasemonkey script: Linkchecker http://www.xs4all.n...script/Linkchecker/Greasemonkey is a Mozilla Firefox extension; this is just one of the many, many things people have done with it. [jutta, Jan 14 2007] Firefox Extension: Linkchecker 0.6.1 http://www.kevinfre...nsions/linkchecker/Not to be confused with the script above; this one does roughly the same thing, but is implemented as a direct Firefox extension, without Greasemonkey. [jutta, Jan 14 2007] Cool idea, but I think it would really take a long time to pull every link on a page, especially if the page has many links, or if said links are burdened with much data.-- wittyhoosier, Dec 10 2006 Man, google's going to get a shitload of email that way.
Also add a way for the users of this feature to (a) share good redirects - it's often not a lot of work to find the updated URL, but why should it be done more than one; and (b) to mark links as dead that aren't technically dead, but that are little more than zombies, with the site redirecting to its root or a search engine on not-found, or the domain name having been taken over by a generic ad hosting service.
Call it the Joy Link Club.-- jutta, Dec 10 2006 I'm sure i've seen a system that can tag dead links in this way.-- webfishrune, Dec 11 2006 Might a browser be configured (I'm thinking some sort of FireFox extension here) so as to display some message on mouseingover a link? (hopefully without having to load the entire page in order to so) - a positive response from the serving machine providing a different indication to a negative one.-- zen_tom, Dec 11 2006 random, halfbakery