What counts as a broken link?

Any outbound or internal link on the scanned page whose destination returns a 4xx (400-499) or 5xx (500-599) HTTP status, or hits a redirect loop. The report also flags 3xx soft-404s where the page exists but has no meaningful content.

Why do broken links hurt SEO?

They waste crawl budget, block link equity flow, and signal site neglect to Google. Pages with many broken outbound links rank worse because Google treats them as lower quality. User experience damage is just as measurable - bounces spike on pages with 404-producing links.

How many links can it check at once?

The free tool scans up to 500 links per URL in a single run. The Grigora suite unlocks multi-URL site-wide crawls with unlimited links.

Does it check external links too?

Yes. Internal and external links are both checked. External link breakage is actually the #1 reported problem - sites you linked to years ago may have shut down, moved, or changed URLs.

How fast is the scan?

Most 50-link pages finish in under 10 seconds. Pages with 300+ links take up to 45 seconds because we check each link concurrently with a fair-play delay to avoid hammering external servers.

Will it follow redirects?

Yes, up to 5 hops. Chains longer than 5 are flagged as redirect loops. Pages that 301 to working content are marked OK with a note; pages that 301 to 404 are broken.

Does it check images and JS/CSS assets?

Not in the free tool - only anchor links. Asset checking (script, link, img, video) is included in the paid Grigora crawler.

Can I check a page behind login?

No. The free tool uses an unauthenticated HEAD then GET request. For authenticated pages, use the Grigora paid crawler with session cookies or use a local tool like Screaming Frog.

How often should I scan my site?

Monthly for small sites (under 100 pages), weekly for sites over 500 pages, and after every major content update. Large news sites should automate weekly scans via the Grigora API.

What do I do after I find broken links?

Fix internal links first (update the anchor href or redirect the old URL). For external links, either remove the link, replace with a working destination, or update to the new canonical URL of the moved resource. Never leave a 404 in production.

Does the tool respect robots.txt?

Yes. It respects both the target page's robots rules and those of destination domains being checked. Links to disallowed paths are flagged as "not checked" rather than broken.

No. The scanned URL and the result list are processed in memory and discarded. Nothing is written to a database unless you upgrade to the paid suite for historical tracking.

FREE SEO TOOL · NO SIGNUP

Broken Link Checker

Scan any URL for dead links, 404s, and redirect loops in seconds. Protect your crawl budget, user experience, and rankings. Built for SEO teams that fix problems before users notice.

Scans internal + external
Detects redirect loops
500 links per scan
Export as .txt instantly

4.6 G2

4.8 Trustpilot

519+ reviews

87K+

Pages scanned

~8s

Avg scan time

500

Links per scan

4.8/5

519 reviews

How It Works

Enter the URL

Paste any publicly accessible page URL. Works for blog posts, product pages, category hubs, and landing pages.

Run the scan

Our crawler pulls every anchor link from the page and checks each for HTTP status in parallel.

Review the report

See which links are broken, what status code they returned, and whether they redirect or loop.

Fix and verify

Update your CMS with working URLs, then re-run the scan to confirm a clean report.

Original Research: Broken Link % vs SEO Performance

We analyzed 2,200 mid-size content sites (10K-200K monthly visits) in Q1 2026. Sites were grouped by broken-link percentage and scored on average rank, crawl budget utilization, and indexed URL ratio.

Broken-Link State	Avg Rank	Crawl Budget Used	Indexed Ratio
0% broken links	8.2	98%	94%
1-3% broken links	11.6	91%	88%
4-7% broken links	16.9	82%	79%
8%+ broken links	24.8	68%	64%

Source: Grigora telemetry + Google Search Console data from 2,200 consenting sites, Q1 2026.

Platform Integration Guides

WordPress

1.Grab the URL of the post or page you want to check.
2.Paste into the tool and run the scan.
3.Export the broken links list.
4.In WordPress admin, use the Better Search Replace plugin to update internal 404s site-wide.
5.For external breakage, edit posts individually and swap the bad URL.

Webflow

1.Copy the live URL from your Webflow hosting.
2.Run the scan.
3.In Designer, use Find & Replace across all collections.
4.Update or remove broken URLs, then republish.
5.Re-scan to confirm zero broken links.

Shopify

1.Paste a product or blog page URL.
2.Run the scan.
3.For broken product links, use Shopify's URL redirect admin to permanently redirect discontinued URLs.
4.For blog content, edit in Shopify admin and replace the anchor.
5.Confirm with a re-scan.

Ghost

1.Open the live post URL.
2.Run the broken link scan.
3.In Ghost admin, locate the post and use Markdown find-and-replace for bad links.
4.Preview before publishing.
5.Re-scan to verify.

Next.js

1.Scan the production URL, not localhost.
2.Export the broken link list as .txt.
3.Use grep across your repo to locate each broken href.
4.Fix in source, commit, and deploy.
5.Run the scan as a post-deploy CI step to catch regressions.

Expand those menus manually in the source page and re-run. Or upgrade to the paid crawler with full JS rendering and navigation.

Error: "Target page could not be fetched"

Cause

Page requires login, is blocked by Cloudflare, or is throttled.

Fix

Confirm the URL is publicly accessible in an incognito browser. If blocked by bot protection, use the paid Grigora crawler with residential routing.

False positive: link reported broken but works in my browser

Cause

Destination blocks HEAD requests or responds differently to automated user agents.

Fix

Our tool retries with GET if HEAD fails, and uses a realistic UA. Still, ~2% false positive rate. Always double-check flagged links manually before deleting.

Scan times out on long page

Cause

More than 500 links or very slow external destinations.

Fix

Break the page into sections and scan each separately. Or use the paid crawler that handles 10,000+ links per page.

Redirect loop reported on valid link

Cause

Destination cycles through www vs non-www or http vs https redirects.

Fix

Check the final canonical URL. Update your link to the final URL to eliminate the loop. This is almost always worth fixing - redirect chains slow every user.

Internal link flagged as broken

Cause

Link points to a URL that requires auth, has a typo, or uses a dev environment.

Fix

Review the anchor href. Common causes: staging URLs accidentally published, trailing slash mismatch, or missing locale prefix.

Tool reports fewer links than you can see

Cause

Some anchor tags are missing href attributes or use javascript: URLs.

Fix

JavaScript links are not HTTP links and cannot be checked. If these should be real URLs, fix the markup to use proper href values.

Scan shows 200 OK on a page that displays a 404 to users

Cause

Soft-404 - the server returns 200 but the page has error content.

Fix

Configure your server to return a real 404 status for missing pages. Google penalizes soft-404s more harshly than real 404s.

Grigora vs Dedicated Crawlers

Feature	Grigora	Screaming Frog	Sitebulb
Pricing	Free, unlimited scans	$99/mo (Screaming Frog)	$119/mo (Sitebulb)
Install required	No - browser	Yes - desktop	Yes - desktop
Links per scan	500	Unlimited (licensed)	Unlimited (licensed)
Checks redirects	Yes, up to 5 hops	Yes	Yes
Soft-404 detection	Yes	Yes	Yes
Concurrent checks	20 in parallel	Configurable	Configurable
Signup	None	Paid license	Paid license
API access	Paid suite	Via CLI	Paid plan

How Broken Links Hurt AI Search

Answer engines treat broken links as a trust signal. Passages from pages with many 404 outbound links are cited less often and ranked lower in AI Overview shortlists. Fix links to stay in the retrieval pool.

Trust proxy

LLMs use link health as a freshness and maintenance proxy. Stale links downgrade the whole page.

Citation penalty

Perplexity and Google AI Overviews explicitly deprioritize pages with high 404 counts in training data.

Cascading loss

Pages that lose AI citations also lose the referral traffic boost, a double-hit on rankings.

GRIGORA SEO SUITE

Watch link health across your whole site

The Grigora suite crawls unlimited URLs weekly, alerts on new broken links the day they appear, and auto-suggests replacement URLs. Built for sites too large to scan one page at a time.

Start Free Trial See Pricing

Weekly site-wide crawls
New-break Slack alerts
Auto-suggested replacements
CSV + API export

Open tool

Frequently Asked Questions

Reviewed by editorial

Grigora Editorial

Last updated April 2026. All scan statistics come from first-party tool telemetry. Respects robots.txt and rate limits to play nice with destination servers.

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