many of them have dead links for providers who quit the business years ago

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staying active for providers who have left the business.  But there's nothing that TER can do about cases where a provider leaves the business and doesn't ask to be delisted.  

There's a few ways you can screen out providers who may be delisted when you search in TER:

- sort by date - the providers with the most current reviews are listed first.  
- exclude bad websites and/or bad phone numbers
- (to get providers who've been reviewed in the past 2 weeks) new reviews onl

If you have spent much time here, one thing you may have noticed are reviews that go missing. TER does not have an issue with hanging on to reviews too long, but of having a poor understanding of how it's clients use their reviews for research purposes. Instead of removing old reviews, and losing forever that info, a little experience here with overlooking certain tells, ignoring reviews two years or older in the providers history, etc, are all options you as a member has that all of us will you loose once that review, good or bad, is deleted.

sort of irritating to research, find a provider you would like to meet and then find out that the link is dead because provider left the business.  any profile that says "report new website" should be removed  also

Just refine your search criteria. Easy enough to avoid looking at old profiles if you don't want to.