Free Broken Link Checker

How the broken link checker works

When you submit a URL, the tool opens that page and collects every link on it, including links that point to other websites. It also collects the images on the page, including lazy-loaded ones, and tests up to 30 image files per scan. It sends a quick request to each link and image and records the response. Then it moves on to the internal pages it found and does the same, covering up to 8 pages and up to 40 links per page in one run. Each scan has a time limit of about 20 seconds, so very large sites are best checked one section at a time.

Steps to find broken links

1. Paste your homepage URL, or the page you think has problems, into the box above.
2. Start the scan and wait while the crawler checks each link.
3. Go through the list for each page. Every bad link is shown with its status, so you know exactly where it sits.
4. Use Download CSV if you want the full list in a spreadsheet, for example to hand it to whoever updates the site.
5. Fix the links, then run the scan again to confirm they are clean.

What the results mean

• 404 Not Found: the page no longer exists at that address. This is the most common broken link.
• 403 Forbidden: the server refuses to show the page. It may be private, or a security rule may be blocking it.
• 500 and 503 errors: the server failed to respond properly. This can be temporary, so check the link again later before changing it.
• Unreachable: the request timed out or the address could not be found at all.
• Placeholder link: the link points to "#" or has an empty href, so it looks clickable but goes nowhere.

How to fix broken links

• The page moved: update the link to the new URL. Also add a 301 redirect from the old address so links from other sites still work.
• The page was deleted: point the link to the closest useful page, or remove the link if nothing fits.
• A typo in the URL: correct the spelling. Small mistakes like a missing slash or a wrong letter cause a lot of 404s.
• Placeholder links: replace "#" with the real destination, or turn the element into plain text if it should not be a link.
• Broken images: upload the image again or fix its path. In WordPress, this often happens after moving a site when old image URLs still point to the previous domain.

After you add redirects, run the redirect chain check to make sure each old URL reaches its new page in one step.

Broken links people often miss

• Footer and sidebar links to old social media profiles or partner sites that no longer exist.
• Links inside older blog posts that point to products or pages you removed.
• Download links to PDFs or files that were deleted during a cleanup.
• Links to other websites that changed their URL structure. Some sites block automated checks, so a link marked as blocked is worth opening once in your browser before you remove it.

Why a 404 error checker is worth running regularly

Links break quietly. A product gets removed, a blog post gets a new slug, or a menu item still points to an old page after a redesign. Visitors who land on an error page often leave, and search engine crawlers spend time on URLs that lead nowhere.

Running this 404 error checker once a month, and after every migration or theme change, keeps those problems small. Use the broken link checker on your most visited pages first, since a dead link there costs you the most.

Official reference: Google's link best practices explain how Google finds and follows links, which is why fixing dead ones matters.