2026-10-21 · Product & pricing
One link in ten was dead — and nobody noticed
On a marketplace, providers enter links to their own documents. For one listing none of them opened any more: the website had moved. The page still looked fine.
Terms, privacy policy, checklists, invitations, flyers — providers link their documents, and nobody checks whether the addresses still work a year later. There is no error: the page renders, the link is there, it just leads nowhere.
Check everything once
A one-off run against production: 2,465 links across 1,043 listings. 238 answered 404 or 410, on 162 listings. 85 did not answer at all, 49 sat behind bot protection (403). Roughly one document link in ten was dead, and nobody had noticed.
Three decisions
What counts as dead? Only 404, 410 and no response. 403, 429 and 5xx are “unknown”: bot protection and overloaded servers say nothing about the page itself.
How many times in a row? Three “no page” answers in a row for the same address, then the link is hidden from visitors. A single working response resets the streak; a new address starts over.
Who sees what? Visitors are not sent the hidden link at all. The provider sees in edit mode since which day it has been unreachable — and gets the original address back, so saving the form does not wipe anything.
Check politely
At most one request per second per host, an honest User-Agent linking to the legal notice. Because the addresses come from users, internal and private networks are never requested, not even via a redirect. The rules for 403/429, this protection and the reset on a new address were added by a review of the plan by a second AI model.
Along the way the block was redesigned: documents as rows with title and domain, legal links such as terms and privacy as a quiet line below. User-entered links rot silently. The check itself is simple — the work is in the three decisions.