Outbound links lead to pages that are gone
multiple links on this site point at pages on other sites that return 404 or 410.
Why it matters
multiple links on this site point at pages on other sites that return 404 or 410. Each one was checked twice — once as the scanner and once as an ordinary browser — so these are not links that merely dislike automated traffic. Outbound links rot on somebody else's schedule: the page moves, the docs are restructured, the company shuts down. The cost is credibility rather than crawlability — a reader who follows a citation and lands on a 404 discounts the rest of the page. Update each one to its current address, replace it with an archive.org snapshot if the original is gone for good, or remove the link and keep the sentence.
How ShipReady detects it
Same-origin links that lead nowhere. SITE-scoped because the candidate set spans the whole crawl: every `<a href>` on every fetched page, plus the URLs the crawler discovered but had no page slots left to fetch. A page-scoped version would re-probe the shared footer's links once per page. Probing is bounded three ways — at most MAX_PROBES distinct URLs, three at a time, and the whole probing phase under a hard PROBE_BUDGET_SECONDS deadline that returns whatever completed rather than failing the scan. A partial answer here is honest (the finding only ever claims what it observed) and a timeout that killed the scan would not be. Only 404, 410 and 5xx are reported for INTERNAL links. A 403 or 429 is bot mitigation, not a broken link. External links are stricter still — see the module docstring.
Detection is deterministic. ShipReady reports this only when it observes the condition directly, and prefers to miss a real problem over inventing one. Rule version 1.1.0.
How to fix it
This is the prompt ShipReady puts in your report — written to be pasted straight into Cursor, Claude Code, or whichever assistant built the app.
Some outbound links on your site point at pages that no longer exist. Each was checked twice — once as the scanner and once as an ordinary browser — so these are genuinely gone rather than servers refusing automated traffic. FOR EACH ONE, pick whichever of these fits: • The page MOVED. Find its current address and update the link. A quick site search on the destination domain usually finds it. • The page is GONE FOR GOOD and you were citing it as evidence. Link to an archive.org snapshot instead — `https://web.archive.org/web/*/<original-url>` — so the citation still supports the sentence. • The link was decorative. Remove it and keep the sentence. A dead link is worse than no link. DO NOT JUST DELETE THE SENTENCE. If you were citing a source for a claim, removing the link leaves the claim unsupported, which is a bigger problem than the 404. THEN STOP IT RECURRING. Outbound links rot on somebody else's schedule, so this is maintenance rather than a one-time fix. Run a link checker in CI on a schedule (`lychee`, `linkinator` and `markdown-link-check` all work in a GitHub Action) so the next one is caught before a reader finds it. WORTH KNOWING: this costs credibility rather than ranking. Search engines do not penalise a site for linking to a 404, but a reader who follows a citation and lands on an error page discounts everything else on that page.
Frequently asked questions
- What does "Outbound links lead to pages that are gone" mean?
- multiple links on this site point at pages on other sites that return 404 or 410.
- How serious is it?
- ShipReady rates this low. Worth fixing. Small individually, and they accumulate.
- How do I fix it?
- Paste the fix prompt on this page into Cursor, Claude Code or your AI editor. It is the same prompt ShipReady puts in your report.
- Can I check my own site?
- Yes — ShipReady scans up to ten pages of any public site for free and reports this alongside every other check. The free report lists every issue it finds and shows full evidence and a fix prompt for the critical and high-severity ones; medium and low findings are counted and unlock on Pro.
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