People expect a lot from a company. If their websites are riddled with broken links, customers won't trust the organization. In turn, the website will receive fewer sales, since poor first impressions are very detrimental in the ecommerce world.
Fortunately, LinkTiger.com has found a solution. Working with thousands of companies around the world, LinkTiger.com specializes in locating broken links on websites. Their results continue to be amazing.
During October 2008, over 9 million links on S&P 500 IT websites were checked in the LinkTiger.com Benchmark. All websites contained broken links, with an average of 2.4% broken links per website. Some sites did significantly better, while there were others that were much worse. LinkTiger.com's Benchmark Report reveals more.
Among the best websites were Dell, Agilent and Google with less than 0.1% broken links. The list of bad websites contains Cisco, Apple, HP, Sun and Oracle with more than 3% of all links broken. Worst of them all was VeriSign with an astounding 9.64% of its links broken on site.
To see the full benchmark results visit http://linktiger.com/broken-link-stats.php
However, the situation doesn't end there. Even if a site has just 0.1% broken links, if one of the links leads to an important page, the results are still devastating.
Consider broken links identified by LinkTiger on the websites of Apple and Microsoft: two companies who are very dependent on online marketing and sales:
If you visited http://www.apple.com/sitemap/ and clicked on "iTunes" or "Tech Specs" in the iPhone subsection, you would get a "Page Not Found Error." This means that customers cannot get tech specs or iTunes information for their iPhones.
Microsoft Games website is even worse because it directly involves online sales: simply go to http://www.microsoft.com/games/ and click on the link "Zoo Tycoon 2: Endangered Species" and you will not be able to buy the game.
It remains to be seen how many others might have link rot, which is why LinkTiger offers free checks for the first 1,000 links. Larger websites can upgrade to a daily check with a paid subscription starting from $14.99.
For more information please visit: www.LinkTiger.com.
For more information on the benchmark or general questions please e-mail: press@linktiger.com