It may sound strange, but the bookmarking service does not offer link validation options. Add to that missing options to verify links when they are added to the service, and it is guaranteed that broken links are becoming a major problem for regular users of the service.

Even worse is the fact that the Delicious staff has decided to block many link checking services from accessing their website. That may have been done to reduce the resource usage of the service. This guide looks at several options to verify links at the social bookmarking service.

Online Link Checkers

Online link checkers are the most comfortable option, as they can check the links of every public Delicious page easily and without additional software or plugins. The problem with this method is that many of the services are blocked by Delicious. It comes down to finding services that are not blocked. It has to be noted that only public links will be checked by the services, which may or may not be problematic. Another, more serious limitation is that only one page can be checked at the same time. Users with dozens or even hundreds of link pages at Delicious would need to verify each page individually.

The following online link checkers can currently be used to check links on delicious: Web Tools, 2bone Link Checker or Megrisoft Link Checker are two that are currently working. Just paste the Delicious url into the form and wait until the service has processed the page. The bad links will be marked, so that they can be identified easily. The last step then is to delete or edit the broken links on Delicious.

The online checkers are the best method for users with only a handful of bookmarks, and those who do not have access to software programs or browser add-ons that can also be used for verifying those links.

Software Link Verifiers

Users with hundreds of saved bookmarks at Delicious can optimize the verification process with software programs. Those programs often can check local and online HTML pages. It is recommended to export all Delicious bookmarks by clicking on Settings > Export / Backup Bookmarks on the Delicious homepage. This saves all bookmarks in a single HTML file on the local system. Software link checkers such as Link Sleuth or Deadlink can be used to verify all links on those exported HTML pages.

check links delicious

The verification looks the following in the Deadlink program. Start the link checker after installation, and select to verify links in an HTML file in the pulldown menu in the header. Now browse to the exported Delicious bookmarks file and load it into the application. A click on the green checkmark icon starts the verification of all bookmarks. It is again necessary to remove or edit any dead links manually at the Delicious website.

The main advantage of software link checkers is that they can process a single HTML file containing all exported bookmarks at once. This optimizes the verification tremendously.

Sync Bookmarks With Web Browsers

The third option makes use of browser add-ons or plugins to sync the Delicious bookmarks with the web browser bookmarks. It is then only necessary to verify the browser bookmarks regularly to eliminate dead links in the bookmarks.

Firefox users can download the official add-on Delicious Bookmarks, Google Chrome users the official Delicious Bookmarks Extension and Internet Explorer users the official Internet Explorer Add-On. All three browser extensions sync the bookmarks with the web browser.

The software programs mentioned in the Software Link Verifiers section of this guide can be used to verify those bookmarks easily.

Verdict:

It is not really clear why there is no official option to check Delicious bookmarks at the official website. One would expect a feature like that from a bookmarking service. Options to export and verify bookmarks with software programs, and to sync bookmarks with web browser bookmarks are probably the two best options to verify Delicious bookmarks on a regular basis.

Have you found another option to verify those bookmarks? Let us know in the comments.

Rarst posted a process on his own website that makes it possible to check all feeds for dead links. The process can be broken down to exporting all feeds in an opml file, extracting the links into a new text file and checking the links with a link checker.

Some feed readers might provide an easier way of discovering dead blogs either because the owner abandoned it or deleted the website completely. Google Reader for one is offering a feature called Subscription trends which show inactive feeds. Users have to click on the Trends link in the top left menu and choose the inactive tab under Subscription trends to get there.

The user can display the top 10, top 20 or top 40 inactive blogs. The name of the blog and the data of the last update is shown in the menu afterwards. It is then easy to unsubscribe to blogs that have not been updated by clicking on the trashcan icon.

The freeware Start Menu Cleaner scans the complete start menu folder structure searching for empty folders and links that point to no where. If it finds such a folder or link it asks whether you want to delete the entry or leave it as it is. It scans the desktop as well which makes it an excellent tool for a quick scan of both areas.

You can choose to delete everything automatically without action from the user and choose to disregard shortcuts that point to files on network and removable drives. Start Menu Cleaner is only 90K in size and does not need to be installed, simply run it from any location you want.

Click on Cleaner in the left menu when you are on the authors homepage, there is unfortunately no direct link to the program.