The internet is built on links. Links to web pages, files, data, photos … links to everything. It is a link economy and a link infrastructure. From time to time small parts of the internet wither away due to link rot. This used to happen in the past on a regular basis as companies moved from one publishing platform to another. The value of ensuring consistent links hadn’t taken hold. It has today.
When I migrated this site from from Drupal to WordPress, I made sure that all the old URLs resolved to the new site. I did this to ensure readers wouldn’t get lost. It is a basic building block of the internet and the newspaper The Chronicle Telegram sucks at it.
I was watching the following YouTube video; don’t ask, I don’t know how I found it.
The URL on the YouTube page comes up as a 404 not found on the Chronicle site. Not only that, but they make fun of you.
The video have been watched 1.3 million times, but the newspaper is getting no additional traffic from it. None. The page taunts you and forces you to look for the information you want. Very easily the newspaper staff could have:
- Reviewed their logs. Identified the 404s and added a redirect.
- Changed their 404 handling. My site performs a search of Yald on a 404.
- Updated their YouTube video. YouTube offers tools to help you edit your descriptions.
Sad. Newspapers really are the extinct creatures of the media age.
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