$ wget --spider BAD_URL GOOD_URL; echo $? 0 $ wget --spider GOOD_URL BAD_URL; echo $? 1 I say they both should be 1. If anything bad happens, return 1 or some other non-zero value. By BAD, I mean a producer of e.g., ERROR 503: Service Unavailable.
--spider or not, too. And stop making me have to confirm each and every mail to this list.