A broken link is the quietest way to lose someone. There is no error in your inbox, no alert, no drop you can point at in analytics. Somebody clicked a link on your services page, landed on a 404, decided your business was not looking after itself, and went back to the search results. You will never know it happened.
This tests one page at a time, on purpose. Paste the address of a page and we fetch it, pull out every link, and check each one: a 404, a server error, a domain that no longer answers, a redirect chain, or an http:// link on an otherwise secure page. You get the exact addresses back, so fixing them is a job rather than an investigation.
Check this page- Links that return 404, 410 or a server error
- Links to domains that no longer answer at all
- Links that bounce through a redirect before arriving
- Insecure http:// links sitting on a secure page
- Placeholder links that look clickable and do nothing
- A list of exactly which addresses are broken
Why does this check one page instead of the whole site?
Honesty about what a free tool can do. A site-wide crawl means hundreds of blocking requests fired from one server, and free tools that promise it either queue you behind everyone else, cap you at a handful of pages, or ask for your email first. Checking one page finishes in seconds and matches how the work actually gets done: you fix a page, you recheck that page. Run it on your home page, your top service pages and anything with a long list of outbound links, and you will have covered where the damage is. A scheduled crawl of every page is what a care plan is for.
Where do broken links actually come from?
Four places, in roughly this order. Your own pages get renamed or deleted and nothing updates the links pointing at them. A supplier, association or news site you linked to reorganises and does not redirect. A business you linked to closes and the domain expires. And somebody types the address wrong in a page editor, which is more common than anyone admits. The first two are the bulk of it, and both are invisible until someone checks.
Do broken links hurt SEO?
Less directly than people claim, and more than is comfortable. Google does not apply a penalty for having a dead link on a page. What it does do is waste crawl budget following links that go nowhere, lose the value of any internal link pointing at a page that no longer exists, and read the page in the context of a site that is not being maintained. The larger effect is on people: a visitor who hits a 404 mid-journey usually leaves, and the behavioural signal from that is real even if the "penalty" is not.
What is the difference between a broken link and a redirect?
A broken link returns an error and the visitor sees nothing useful. A redirect works, it just costs an extra round trip while the browser is told where to go instead. Redirects are not failures and you should keep them in place for anyone else linking to your old addresses. What you should not do is leave your own internal links pointing at the old address, because every one of those is a redirect you are inflicting on your own visitors for no reason. That is why we report them separately.
What about a link to a domain that has expired?
This is the one worth taking seriously, and we score it harder than a plain 404. When a domain expires it goes on sale, and expired domains that still have links pointing at them are bought deliberately. A link on your site to a supplier who closed two years ago can quietly become a link to a gambling site, a scam, or a page full of spam. It looks like your recommendation. Checking the outbound links on your resources and partners pages once a year takes minutes and is worth doing for this reason alone.
What each result means
How we grade what comes back, and what to do about it.
| What we found | How serious | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| 404 or 410 | Fix now | Point the link at the new address, or remove it |
| 500 or 503 | Check again | Often temporary. If it persists, the destination is broken |
| No response at all | Fix now | Usually an expired domain. Check what is there before relinking |
| 301 or 308 redirect | Tidy up | Update internal links to the final address, keep the redirect |
| http:// on an https page | Fix soon | Change to https. Almost every site supports it now |
| href="#" or javascript:void(0) | Tidy up | Give it a destination, or make it a button |
How to clear the broken links off a site
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1
Start with the pages that earn
Home, top service pages, and anything you send paid traffic to. A dead link there costs money today.
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2
Fix your own pages first
Internal 404s are entirely within your control and are usually a page that got renamed.
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3
Redirect rather than delete
If a page moved, a 301 to the new address keeps the visitors and the ranking signal that came with it.
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4
Check where dead outbound links now point
Before you relink, load the address. Expired domains get bought and repurposed.
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5
Update internal links that redirect
Keep the redirect for the outside world, but stop sending your own visitors the long way round.
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6
Recheck after every content edit
Broken links come back. Anyone editing pages will eventually rename one without updating what points at it.
Fair questions.
How many links does it check?
Up to 60 unique links per page, with a cap of 10 to any single domain, and it stops after 20 seconds of checking. Those limits exist so the tool stays fast and free for everyone, and so it cannot be pointed at somebody else's site as a load generator. If a page has more links than that, the result tells you exactly how many were tested and how many were left.
Why did it flag a link that works when I click it?
Usually one of three reasons. Some sites block automated requests entirely and return a 403 to anything that is not a person, which we report honestly rather than hiding. Some are slow enough to exceed our five-second-per-link timeout. And some servers refuse HEAD requests, though we already retry those with a normal GET. Load any flagged link yourself before acting on it.
Can I check a page that is not mine?
Yes. Everything here is a public request for a public page, the same one a browser makes. Checking a competitor's site or a directory you are listed on is a legitimate use.
Does it check images and scripts too?
No, only links in anchor tags, which is what a visitor can actually click. Broken images and missing scripts are a different problem and show up in our website speed test and security scan.
Will it find links inside my JavaScript?
Only if they are present as links in the HTML we receive. A menu built entirely by JavaScript after the page loads will not be visible to us, and it is not visible to a lot of crawlers either, which is worth knowing separately.
How often should I run this?
Quarterly for a small site, monthly if you publish regularly, and every time you rename or delete a page. Outbound links to other businesses deserve an annual look because they decay whether you touch them or not.
What is a redirect chain?
When a link goes to A, which redirects to B, which redirects to C. Each hop costs time and a small amount of the ranking signal being passed. One redirect is normal and fine. Three in a row is a sign nobody has updated the original link in years.
Do you crawl the whole site if I pay?
That is part of our care plan, along with monitoring, backups and updates. But you do not need to pay to fix a broken link. Everything this tool finds, you can fix yourself in a page editor, and we tell you exactly which addresses to change.
Hosting, updates, backups, security and monthly changes, all handled, so your site stays fast and safe without you thinking about it.