Broken link finder
Scan a page for every link that returns 4xx or 5xx — internal and external — in one pass.
Paste any URL above. We'll extract every <a href> on the page (up to 50) and check each one's status.
Why broken links matter
Every broken outbound link on your page hurts you in three ways. First, the user clicks and hits a dead end — immediately damaging trust. Second, Google's page-quality signals factor in outbound link health; pages with many 404s rank lower. Third, when the broken link is one of your internal links, you lose crawl budget on dead URLs that could be spent on real content.
Broken links accumulate silently. You publish an article in 2024 linking to a competitor's page; in 2026 they restructure their site and that page becomes a 404. Your article never gets revisited unless something flags it. This scanner is the flag.
What the categories mean
- OK — link returns 200-299. Working.
- Redirects — returns 300-399. Still works for users but each hop bleeds link equity. Update to point at the final URL directly.
- Broken — returns 400+. Dead URL. Update or remove.
- Errored — couldn't reach the URL at all (DNS failure, timeout, SSL issue). Often temporary, but if it persists across re-scans, treat as broken.
Limits + scope
We extract up to 50 unique <a href> URLs per page and check each in parallel. JavaScript-rendered links are invisible to the scan — we read static HTML only. The full the platform's in-app crawler runs through every page on a site, follows JavaScript-rendered content via a headless browser, and re-checks links on a schedule.
FAQ
Why are external links sometimes 'errored' even though they work in my browser?
Some hosts block automated user agents or rate-limit unknown crawlers. Cloudflare, in particular, often returns 403 to non-browser HEAD requests even when the URL is fine in a real browser. Treat 'errored' as 'needs manual verification', not necessarily 'broken'.
Why does the scan cap at 50 links?
Each link costs a real HTTP request from our server. Capping keeps the response fast (under 15s typical) and the rate-limit budget reasonable. For exhaustive site-wide scanning, the in-app crawler queues background work and isn't constrained by per-request timeouts.
Will redirect chains be flagged separately?
We follow redirects automatically and report the final status. To inspect the chain itself, use the http-status-checker — it shows every hop with its status and timing.
Does this scan check 'nofollow' links too?
Yes — we check every link regardless of rel attribute. Nofollow doesn't make a broken link any less broken from the user's perspective.
Why doesn't the scan find image links or asset URLs?
We only extract <a href> tags. For sub-resources (images, scripts, stylesheets) loaded with the wrong protocol, use the mixed-content-checker. For asset 404s, you'd need a full-site crawl.
Will my URL be saved?
No. We don't log inputs. Each scan is processed and discarded.
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