GovFactsLinkChecker is an automated service operated by GovFacts (https://govfacts.org). It periodically checks whether the external sources cited in GovFacts articles are still reachable, so our civic education content keeps accurate, working citations.
What it does
It requests only the specific URLs GovFacts already cites and confirms each still returns a valid response and records the result. If a cited page goes offline, it repoints the citation to an archived snapshot (e.g., the Internet Archive) instead of leaving a dead link.
What it does not do
It is not a search-engine crawler and not a content scraper. It does not index, copy, store, or republish your pages. It does not crawl your site or follow links to discover other pages — only the exact URLs we cite, with a minimal response.
How to identify it
User-Agent GovFactsLinkChecker/1.0 (+https://govfacts.org/linkbot); From linkbot@govfacts.org
Requests originate from GovFacts’s own servers.
How it behaves
Honors robots.txt incl. Crawl-delay; at most one request at a time per site with a multi-second gap; backs off and honors Retry-After on 429/503; uses conditional requests to avoid re-downloading; low, paced rate, re-checking each URL infrequently (less often the more stable it proves).
Opt out or contact
Add to robots.txt: User-agent: GovFactsLinkChecker / Disallow: / (We will honor it and will rely on archived snapshots instead.)
Questions/allowlisting/abuse
Email us at linkbot@govfacts.org