An experiment, circa 1996.  An internet-draft on the development of the HTTP methods LINK and UNLINK.

The HTTP protocol has recognized the importance of link management since HTTP/1.0 RFC 1945 [1]. However, the methods defined in HTTP/1.0 are limited and remain largely unimplemented. The existing link concept is defined irrespective of direction, ie, reference or resource, and so leaves too much semantically implied. The revised methods define simple and efficient syntax and semantics for a complete hyperlink management protocol within HTTP.

Dangling links are a bigger and bigger problem on a large and growing wwweb.  Messages like the following are common:

 The URL entered was not found on this server.

This one resulted from a URL stored in a popular search engine. A solution is readily available in defining HTTP's LINK and UNLINK methods with syntax and semantics that effectively and efficiently provide for hyperlink maintenace.

Hyperlink maintenance implies communication, processing and storage costs.  The proposed methods cut processing with syntax by not defining semantics that imply searching on behalf of call receivers.  The proposed methods' semantics also match storage requirements to the HTML LINK tag concept. Storage space is not required on behalf of robots for implementation.

The protocol detailed here is currently being implemented in an HTTP/1.1 compliant, commercial wwweb server and agent platform under the extensions provisions of that specification. This protocol has been realized as the result of that effort.