Is there a faster way to check if an external web page exists?

Question

I wrote this method to check if a page exists or not:

protected bool PageExists(string url)
{
try
    {
        Uri u = new Uri(url);
        WebRequest w = WebR         


        

Answer 1

static bool GetCheck(string address)
{
    try
    {
        HttpWebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(address) as HttpWebRequest;
        request.Method = "GET";
        request.CachePolicy = new RequestCachePolicy(RequestCacheLevel.NoCacheNoStore);
        var response = request.GetResponse();
        return (response.Headers.Count > 0);
    }
    catch
    {
        return false;
    }
}
static bool HeadCheck(string address)
{
    try
    {
        HttpWebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(address) as HttpWebRequest;
        request.Method = "HEAD";
        request.CachePolicy = new RequestCachePolicy(RequestCacheLevel.NoCacheNoStore);
        var response = request.GetResponse();
        return (response.Headers.Count > 0);
    }
    catch
    {
        return false;
    }
}

Beware, certain pages (eg. WCF .svc files) may not return anything from a head request. I know because I'm working around this right now.
EDIT - I know there are better ways to check the return data than counting headers, but this is a copy/paste from stuff where this is important to us.