What happens to your old links?

A client digs your old quote out of their email, clicks the link in it and lands on an error page. You never hear about it.

When a site is rebuilt, the old addresses stop working. Links in emails, Facebook posts, bookmarks, and search results if you have any.

So there is one thing worth asking whoever builds the site: what happens to the old addresses?

What a good answer sounds like

A good answer is a list. They go through the old addresses and tell you where each one will point on the new site.

A bad answer is "nobody uses those". Nobody knows that until the list has been looked at.

A third answer is "we will do that at the end". In practice the end is the moment the old site is already gone and the addresses cannot be recovered from anywhere.

You can make the list yourself in fifteen minutes

Open your old site and write down every page the menu reaches. Then go through the places you have linked to it yourself: your email signature, Facebook, LinkedIn, your Google business profile, old quotes.

Next to each one, note which new page answers the same thing. That column is the whole value of the list, and it is also the one your supplier does not have.

Make the list before the old site is switched off. After that the addresses cannot be recovered from anywhere.

Pointing everything at the front page is not a fix

The usual shortcut is to point every old address at the front page. In the stats it looks like nothing is broken.

The reader came for one thing. They get the front page, do not find it, and leave. An error page would at least tell them what happened.

Every old address belongs on the new page that answers the same thing. If there is no equivalent, that is a decision to make deliberately, not a default.

If the site has already been rebuilt

Open your own sent mail and click one of the old links. There is your answer.

If it lands on an error page, there is work to do. The same fix works after the fact: old addresses can be pointed at new ones at any time, and it does not take a new site.

If the old site is gone, the addresses can often still be found in Google and in old messages. Even that list beats an empty one.