What Does This Mean?
The gradual tendency of web links to stop working over time as pages are moved, changed or removed. People use it for the slow loss of old forum posts, citations and shared links.
REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
""Half the sources in that old essay now go nowhere, which is link rot at work.""
LORE & ORIGIN
Wikipedia defines link rot as hyperlinks ceasing to point to their original target because the file, page or server moved or became permanently unavailable, and it lists studies: about 1 in 200 links broke per week in a 2003 general-web study, 49% of links in US Supreme Court opinions were dead by 2013, and a 2023 Pew Research analysis found 38% of 2013 pages had disappeared. The article does not say when the phrase was coined. It also describes content drift, where a working link no longer shows the original content. The phrase is a technical term with a figurative "rot" metaphor rather than a slang coinage.
MENTIONS OVER TIME
Radar observation data not yet available for this term.
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