Dear Jason, You Have a Problem with Link Rot NOW.

Dear Jason Calacanis,
I read your response to Skrentablog’s criticism that Mahalo will have problems with link rot.¹ The fact is you have a problem with link rot right now on at least one page updated by your team today.

Dead Links / Stale Links on Climate_Change

Let’s look at the links on your search results for “Climate Change” which was edited on August 22 — in other words today.

Because my husband had to take “polar bear defense” training before setting off on an arctic research expedition, I clicked on “‘Don’t discuss polar bears’: memo to scientists” found on Mahalo’s climate change links page.

Clicking lead me to this now dead article.¹

Nestled among banner ads and Google Ads, we find the content. It says “We’re sorry… this story is not currently available”.

By the way, I held up writing this post. That link was already dead a week ago.

How many stale links appear on the very day Mahalo search results are “updated”

I’m not going to click to check every link; that’s what Mahalo’s team should be doing. But anyone who enjoys reading news and issue oriented blog quickly learns which news sites habitually publish stories under temporary links.²

I know your team will find it helpful to learn your freshly reviewed page contains at least four additional dead links. These include:

1. The Latimes editorial: “Climate deal talks gain global support” (Published August 3.)
2. Another Yahoo news article: “Blair Using Last Bush Visit to Urge Action on Climate”.
3. Reuters news article: <a href="http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyid=2007-04-09T224810Z_01_N09342503_RTRUKOC_0_US-CROW.xml&src=rss&rpc=22" rel="no