Broken Link Checker – Find 404s & Dead Links

How to Use the Checker

1. Choose an input — paste a URL list, a sitemap (URL or XML), or HTML with links.
2. Click "Start Checking" — URLs are tested in parallel with a progress bar; you can stop at any time.
3. Review the results — broken links are grouped first, each with a recommendation.
4. Export the CSV to track fixes or hand to your development team.

What the Status Codes Mean

• 2xx — OK. The URL loads normally.
• 301/302 — Redirects. Not broken, but worth cleaning up by linking directly to the final URL.
• 404 — Not found. The page is gone. Fix the URL, or 301 it to a relevant page to preserve authority.
• 410 — Gone. Deliberately removed. Redirect it if you still want the signals.
• 403 — Forbidden. Access denied — fix permissions or remove the link.
• 5xx — Server errors. Temporary or broken server state; monitor and re-check.
• Unreachable. The browser could not reach the server (CORS, robots, firewall, timeout) — verify with a server-side tool.

Why Broken Links Hurt

Every broken internal link wastes crawl budget and sends users (and crawlers) to a dead end. If the dead URL used to rank, its authority quietly evaporates unless you 301 it to a live, relevant page. On the external side, linking to dead resources signals stale content to users — and to engines watching quality signals. Regular link checks are one of the highest-ROI maintenance tasks in SEO.

Link Checking Best Practices

• Check monthly, and always after site migrations, redesigns or CMS upgrades.
• Redirect, don't delete. Removed pages should 301 to the closest relevant page, never to the homepage.
• Update inbound links — if you control the linking page, change the href to the new URL directly.
• Distinguish errors from control flow — 401/403 may be intentional for private resources; 404/410 on public pages are the real problems.
• Verify unreachable URLs server-side before deciding they are broken.

Example: A Migration Cleanup

After a site migration, a content manager pasted 90 old URLs from an export. The checker found 41 OK, 26 redirects, 19 404s and 4 unreachable. The 19 missing pages were old blog posts; 12 were re-created under new slugs, and 7 were 301-redirected to their category pages. The follow-up check passed 100% — and the "404 not found" report in Search Console stopped growing.

Common Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

• Only checking the homepage. Internal links deeper in the site break just as often.
• Deleting pages instead of redirecting. A 404 loses all accumulated authority.
• Trusting a single check. 5xx errors are often transient — re-check before acting.
• Ignoring redirect chains. A 301 to a 301 to a 200 works, but each hop costs performance. Use the Redirect Chain Checker to flatten them.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many URLs can I check?

Up to 120 per run, which covers most page-level audits. For full-site crawling you need a crawler — this tool is designed for fast, reliable, browser-based spot checks.

Do redirects count as broken?

No, but they are flagged for cleanup because each hop adds latency and dilutes signals slightly.

Is my URL list sent anywhere?

The URLs themselves must be requested to be checked (that is the point of the tool). No data is stored or shared beyond those standard network requests.

Related SEO Tools

Pair the checker with the XML Sitemap Analyzer to feed it a full URL list, the Redirect Chain Checker for redirects found here, the HTTP Status Code Checker for bulk classification, and the Internal Link Analyzer to fix anchors at the source.