A data report
Do accreditation registry links still work? A dated, human-verified check
On 28 September 2026 we tested the official register addresses recorded for the accreditation bodies in our library. Of the 121 bodies we track, 85 have a registry record; 81 of those records carry a testable URL. 68 of the 81 opened (84%). The other 13 failed: 10 pages had moved or been removed, and 3 addresses no longer resolved. A further 4 records carry no registry address in our library at all. This page publishes the aggregate result and the full method — including why we opened every failing address by hand before counting it.
The numbers (as of 28 September 2026)
| The 81 testable registry URLs on record | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Opened (accessible) | 68 | 84% |
| Page moved or removed (site live, address returns 404) | 10 | 12% |
| Address no longer resolves (DNS/connection dead) | 3 | 4% |
Separately: 4 of our 85 registry records carry no registry address in our library.
Why we verified every failure by hand
Automated testing alone misleads. Our crawler flagged 17 of the 81 URLs as failing; a person then opened each of those in a real browser, and 4 turned out to be live — they block automated clients. Counting them as failures would have overstated the failure rate by about five percentage points. So the rule behind every number above: an address only counts as failing after a person has opened it and seen it fail. (Successes were established by an HTTP 200 response to a browser-agent request; failures, and only failures, were additionally human-verified.)
What this does and does not mean
“Failed” describes one recorded URL at the moment of our test — nothing more. It is not a judgment about any accreditation body's quality or legitimacy, and we publish no per-institution results — only the aggregate. This is a single dated measurement: it says nothing about how quickly links break, only how many were broken on this date. We will repeat the measurement and re-date this page.
The affected records in our own library were updated on 3 October 2026.
Method
- Source set: the 121 accreditation bodies in the Certifidex library; 85 have a registry record; 81 of those carry a testable URL.
- Each URL requested with a browser user-agent; HTTP 200 counted as accessible.
- Every non-200 response opened by a person in a real Chrome browser and classified: live (bot-blocked or transient — counted as accessible) · moved/removed · unresolvable.
- Measurement date: 28 September 2026. Limitations we state openly: successes were not individually human-opened; redirects that ended in 200 counted as accessible; we did not audit page content beyond loading.
Reuse
This aggregate dataset is published under CC BY 4.0. Cite as: “Certifidex, Registry Link Check, 28 September 2026”, linking this page.
Data measured 28 September 2026 · failures human-verified · method above.
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Attributing this record helps other researchers verify it independently.
"Accreditation Registry Links: A Dated Check." Certifidex, FutureTechnologies. Last verified 28 September 2026. https://certifidex.com/insights/registry-link-check