Broken Link Checker

A Broken Link Checker extracts links from a webpage and safely samples their destination status. It flags links that fail to resolve or return obvious 4xx or 5xx errors. Because unrestricted crawling can be abused, this implementation intentionally limits the number of unique destinations checked in one run.

Broken links interrupt user journeys, waste editorial references and can make older content feel neglected. They also complicate migrations when internal links keep pointing to deleted pages that no longer have a relevant replacement.

1. 1Enter the page URL.
2. 2Let the tool extract link destinations from the fetched HTML.
3. 3Review the sampled destinations that failed or returned an error status.
4. 4Open broken links manually to confirm the issue is not temporary or caused by bot blocking.
5. 5Update, remove or redirect the link depending on whether a genuine replacement exists.

• 404 and 410 normally indicate missing resources.
• 5xx responses indicate a server-side problem at the destination.
• A network failure can mean DNS, timeout, TLS or blocking rather than a permanent broken page.
• A redirected link is not necessarily broken, but internal links should usually be updated to their final destination.

• External research URLs disappear after a publication redesign.
• Internal slugs change without a redirect map.
• HTTP links redirect through several hops to HTTPS.
• Temporary security blocks are mistaken for permanent 404s.
• Relative links are malformed in template output.

• Replace external citations with equivalent authoritative sources when the original is gone.
• Create relevant redirects for moved internal content.
• Update internal links directly after migrations.
• Retest uncertain network failures before removing a valid citation.

• Run link checks on high-value evergreen pages periodically.
• Preserve useful linked resources during redesigns.
• Avoid redirecting every missing URL to the homepage.
• Maintain source notes for statistics so references can be updated efficiently.

The tool samples a limited number of links and sees destination behavior from one server context. Some sites block automated requests or respond differently by geography, login or user-agent.