The Link Rot Phenomenon and its Influence on the Quality of the Websites of Rural Tourism Facilities in Poland

Abstract

SummarySubject and purpose of work: The subject of the research were the profiles of links (internal and outbound ones) of websites of rural tourism facilities in Poland. The purpose of the study was to assess the scale of the link rot phenomenon and its impact on the quality of websites of rural tourism facilities in Poland.Materials and methods: The assessment of the link profile was conducted using the Broken Link Checker application. The websites’ quality assessment (the degree of their optimization for search engines) was conducted using three different applications which automate tests.Results: A total of 919 websites were examined. Broken links were recorded on 464 sites, where approximately 65% of them had only a few broken links. Broken links that referred to the description of an offer or social media accounts were particularly unfavourable. No linear correlation was recorded between the number of broken links and the website’s optimization for search engines.Conclusions: The research demonstrated that the scale of the link rot phenomenon was relatively small in the group of the examined sites. It seems, however, that this was not the result of conscious design measures or optimization.