Broken Link Checker
Requests every link on the page one by one and reports the response codes. Links that drop a visitor on a 404 cost you both the experience and the trust.
- Sign-in requiredMembership is free
- Open on the Pro plan100 runs a day
- Saved to your historyReachable from your account
What does this tool look at?
Everything that decides whether Google can crawl and index your page: tags, redirects, robots, sitemaps and server responses.
- HTTP status code for every link
- 404 and 5xx addresses listed separately
- Addresses that never answered (timeouts)
- Scan depth set by your plan
What this tool measures
A broken link is a promise that used to be true and no longer is. The visitor clicks, a 404 page opens, and they go back. A search engine notes that the page is unmaintained: a page whose links have rotted is a page that has fallen out of date.
The tool collects the links on the page you enter, deduplicates them, and requests each one. It works ten at a time in parallel, so a page with forty links finishes in seconds. Responses fall into three groups: working, redirected and dead.
The scope selector lets you scan internal links only or external links only. External links are outside your control, so they rot the fastest; internal links usually break after an address change of your own.
How to use it
- 1
Enter the address of the page to check
Start with the pages carrying the most links: resource lists, older blog posts and index pages.
- 2
Choose the scope
Internal links are yours to fix immediately. External ones need an alternative source found first.
- 3
Take the broken links table
That table is your task list. Each row carries the address and the status code that came back.
- 4
Update the redirected links too
They are not broken, but they add a pointless hop. Pointing the link at the final address is faster and cleaner.
When to use it
- While refreshing a guide written two or three years ago that cites a lot of outside sources.
- After a migration, to confirm internal links point at the new addresses.
- To make maintaining bibliography or link-list pages an annual routine.
- When 404s climb in Search Console and you need to find which page links to them.
Reading the result
A link returning 404
The target page is gone. If it is internal, repoint it; if it is external, find another source or drop the link.
A link returning 5xx
The target server may have a temporary problem. Rescan in a few hours; if it persists, remove the link.
An address that never answered
A timeout or a domain that will not resolve. The site may be gone entirely, or it may be blocking robots.
A redirected link
It works, but it costs a hop. On internal links especially, pointing at the final address protects crawl budget.
You hit the scope limit
The page has more links than your plan scans in one run. Narrow the scope to internal or external to reach the rest.
Questions about the Broken Link Checker
The limit depends on your plan: the first 10 unique links on the free plan, the first 40 on Pro and the first 150 on the enterprise plan. If the page has more, the tool says so, and narrowing the scope to internal or external lets you cover the rest in a second run.
There is no penalty as such. The effect is indirect: a visitor who lands on a 404 leaves, and a page where half the cited sources are dead does not look current. On guide-style pages that difference shows up in rankings over time.
Some servers reject automated requests, especially behind a firewall or bot protection. A link can work perfectly in your browser and still report 403 here. Open the addresses you doubt once by hand to confirm.
This tool works on a single page. For site-wide coverage, work through the pages carrying the most links in turn, or start from the 404 list in Search Console's coverage report.
Use it alongside these
The other tools in the same category. Run them together and you see the whole picture.
The tool found the problem. Now for the fix
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