Maintain address to the same content across time

Organizational or technological changes on a web site may cause a large number of addresses (URL) to change, despite the referenced content remained unchanged.

For instance, if the address of a site is swapped from site.com to site.pt, and the first domain name is deactivated, all links on other pages or Bookmarks will become broken. However, the contents of the site remain unchanged and continue to be available under different addresses.

Maintaining addresses across time brings many usability advantages. An old address should always be redirected to a new one, if the referenced content is the same.

In the context of a web archive, following this recommendation contributes to an efficient:

• access to the evolution of a page across time;
• optimization of the frequency of crawl;
• navigation among archived contents.