A listing is not a product
Marketplace listings are rented space. A seller can change the SKU, raise the price, run out of stock or disappear entirely, and the URL you saved still resolves — to a different item, an empty page or the marketplace home. That is why a 70,000-row sheet can have 30,000 dead rows and still look impressive in a screenshot.
Four ways a row dies
Stock-out. The most common and the most honest: the item sold and the listing stayed up.
SKU swap. The same URL now sells a cheaper version. The price looks like a bargain; the product is not the one in the photo.
Seller exit. The store closes; every link in it dies at once.
Platform removal. The marketplace takes the listing down. The URL redirects or 404s.
The ten-second check
Open the link. If it lands on the marketplace home page instead of an item, it is dead. If the title does not match the row, it is a SKU swap. If the price is 80% lower than the category median, assume swap until proven otherwise. If there is no size selector, the listing is probably a placeholder.
What we do differently
We keep the table small enough to re-read. Every row in the current build was opened in November 2026; dead rows were removed, not archived. Category pages carry a check date, and the correction form exists because readers find dead links faster than any batch process.
Quick answers
Should a spreadsheet keep dead links for reference?
Only in a clearly marked archive. In a live table they waste clicks and train readers to distrust the list.
How often should a sheet be re-checked?
At least quarterly for a small table, monthly for a large one. Anything claiming daily updates without a date stamp is marketing.