Assert that a WebElement is not present using Selenium WebDriver with java

It's easier to do this:

driver.findElements(By.linkText("myLinkText")).size() < 1

I think that you can just catch org.openqa.selenium.NoSuchElementException that will be thrown by driver.findElement if there's no such element:

import org.openqa.selenium.NoSuchElementException;

....

public static void assertLinkNotPresent(WebDriver driver, String text) {
    try {
        driver.findElement(By.linkText(text));
        fail("Link with text <" + text + "> is present");
    } catch (NoSuchElementException ex) { 
        /* do nothing, link is not present, assert is passed */ 
    }
}