Broken Link Checker
Find every dead link on your website. The checker crawls your pages, tests every internal and outbound link it finds, and shows each broken one with the pages it's on and the link text, so you know exactly what to fix.
What counts as a broken link
| Result | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Broken | The link returns a 4xx or 5xx status, redirects to one, or fails outright (no DNS, timeout, refused connection). |
| Redirected | The link works, but through a redirect. Pointing it straight at the final URL saves a hop for visitors and crawlers. |
| Couldn't verify | An outbound site answered 403, 429 or 999, which usually means it blocks automated requests. LinkedIn, Instagram and Amazon do this. Check these by hand. |
| Blocked by robots.txt | Internal pages your robots.txt blocks for Googlebot. They aren't fetched, so their status is unknown. |
How to fix broken links
- Start with internal broken links: they're entirely in your control and waste crawl budget.
- If the page moved, update the link to its new address, and add a 301 redirect from the old URL so links from other sites still work.
- If it's gone for good, remove the link or point it at the closest useful page.
- For broken outbound links, find the new location of the resource, link to an archived copy, or remove the link.
- Run the check again to confirm, and export the CSV to share with whoever edits the pages.
Questions
Do broken links hurt SEO?
A few broken outbound links won't hurt rankings directly, but they make pages less useful. Broken internal links do more harm: visitors hit dead ends, link value is lost, and crawlers spend time on pages that don't exist. Fixing them is one of the easiest technical SEO wins.
How many pages does it check?
Up to 1,000 pages per run, starting from the homepage and following links, plus the URLs in your XML sitemap. Every link on those pages is checked, including outbound links, up to 3,000 of them.
Does it check links in JavaScript menus?
Only links that are in the HTML as served. If your navigation is built by JavaScript, those links aren't seen, and search engines may struggle with them too. Real <a href> links are the safest choice.
Is the WordPress Broken Link Checker plugin better?
The plugin runs on your server and checks continuously, which can slow a busy site. This checker runs from ours, needs no install and works on any platform. For a whole-site check of everything else too, run the Website SEO Audit.