The Internet Archive is taking aim at one of the web's most persistent problems: broken links. The nonprofit just launched Link Fixer, a WordPress plugin built in partnership with Automattic that automatically salvages dead URLs by redirecting readers to archived versions. With nearly 40% of links from 2013 now leading to dead ends, according to Pew Research, this tool could help preserve the integrity of millions of WordPress sites that power over 40% of the web.
The web's memory is failing, and Internet Archive thinks it has a fix. The nonprofit behind the Wayback Machine just rolled out Link Fixer, a WordPress plugin designed to stop the spread of broken links before they become permanent digital dead ends.
Built through a partnership with Automattic, the company behind WordPress, Link Fixer tackles what researchers call 'link rot' - the gradual decay of web references as pages go offline, domains expire, or content gets restructured. A Pew Research study from 2024 found that 38% of links that existed in 2013 no longer work. The problem spans everything from news articles and Wikipedia entries to government documents and social media posts.
The new plugin works quietly in the background. It scans outbound links in WordPress posts, checks them against the Wayback Machine's archive, and automatically creates snapshots of pages that haven't been saved yet. When a linked page goes dark, Link Fixer redirects readers to the most recent archived version instead of serving up a 404 error.
What makes this different from simply linking to archived pages upfront is the plugin's intelligence. It continuously monitors links and, if a dead page springs back to life, automatically switches readers back to the original URL. This means site owners don't have to manually track which external pages are live and which need archive fallbacks.
The tool also preserves a site's own content by archiving posts, adding another layer of protection against digital disappearance. For publishers, researchers, and anyone building reference-heavy content, that's a meaningful safeguard.
