Free crawlability check
Broken Link Checker
Dead links frustrate visitors and waste crawl budget. Check a page for internal links that answer with errors or long redirect chains.
Check links
Enter the address of a page. A sample of its internal links is requested.
Why use the Broken Link Checker
Status for each link
Every sampled link is requested and its final status is reported, so a 404 or a 500 is easy to spot.
Redirects flagged
A link that needs more than one redirect is reported, because internal links should point at the final url.
Polite by design
Links are sampled and requested two at a time, honouring Crawl-delay, so the site is never put under load.
Linked from the page
Only links found in the page HTML are checked, the ones crawlers and visitors actually follow.
When to use the Broken Link Checker
After deleting pages
Find the links that still point at content you removed.
Navigation changes
Check the menu and footer after restructuring the site.
Old articles
Long lived blog posts collect dead internal links over time.
URL changes
When slugs change, internal links should be updated rather than left to redirect.
Launch checklist
Make sure no link on the home page leads to a placeholder.
Client reports
Give a list of broken links with their status codes rather than screenshots.
Understanding Broken Link
Why broken links matter
A broken internal link is a dead end for a visitor and a wasted request for a crawler. Links are also how search engines discover pages and judge which ones matter, so a link to a missing page passes nothing.
How the sample works
- 1Collect. Internal links are collected from the page HTML, skipping anchors, mail links and other schemes.
- 2Sample. Up to ten links are chosen so that one check never crawls the whole site.
- 3Request. Each link is requested with redirects followed and every hop validated.
- 4Report. Links that end in an error or need more than one redirect are listed.
External links
Links to other sites are not requested. Their owners did not ask to be checked, and their availability changes often. Check them with a dedicated tool if you need to.
Privacy, safety and limits
The check runs on Aback servers as AbackAuditBot. It sends ordinary GET and HEAD requests, never a cookie, a password or a form, and it never changes anything on the site.
The result is stored as a report that anyone with its link can open, and it is deleted after 30 days. Do not check addresses that carry secrets in the path or the query string.
Related tools and guides
Frequently asked questions
Does it check every link on the site?
No. The free checker samples links from one page. A standard audit samples pages across the site and checks their links, and the Pro deep mode samples up to 100 pages.
Are external links checked?
No. Only links to the same site are requested.
Why are redirects reported as problems?
An internal link that redirects costs an extra round trip every time. Point it at the final address instead.
What counts as broken?
A link whose final answer is a 4xx or 5xx status, a timeout or a connection error.
Will it find links added by JavaScript?
No. It reads the links in the HTML the server sends, which are the ones every crawler sees. Links that only exist after JavaScript runs are less reliable for crawlers anyway.
Could checking links hurt my site?
No. The checker sends at most two requests at a time to your site, honours Crawl-delay, and only sends GET and HEAD requests.
How do I fix a broken link?
Update the link to the current address of the content. If the content is gone for good, remove the link or point it at the closest replacement.