Recovering lost or broken links by resolving URL problems or requesting corrections from publishers.
Link reclamation is the process of recovering a link that has disappeared or no longer reaches its intended resource. The cause may be on your website, such as a changed URL, or on the referring website, such as an editing mistake. Identifying that cause determines the appropriate repair.
If your resource moved, a relevant permanent redirect can preserve the route from the old URL. If a publisher removed or mistyped a link, a correction request may be appropriate. A report that a link is lost is a starting point for investigation; inspect the actual referring page and destination before deciding what happened.
Reclamation differs from asking for a new link where none existed. It also differs from replacing another organization’s dead resource. Keep a record of the original source, intended destination and observed problem so that the work addresses a real loss rather than inflating a recovery count.
Takeaway: Protect useful existing references when you reorganize a website. Prioritize links that lead customers or readers to important information, and repair the actual cause.
Example
A supplier directory still links to a bakery’s old wholesale-information URL after a redesign. If the same information now lives on a new page, a direct redirect can restore the journey. The bakery can also ask the directory to update its link to the current address.
What to check
Do not redirect every missing URL to the homepage. Use a genuinely relevant successor when one exists, then check the final page and any redirect sequence. Mark unresolved requests separately from confirmed repairs.
For more detail, see Site moves with URL changes.