Broken link checker
You're vetting a resource page for broken links so you can pitch your own content as the replacement. Paste it: this tool requests every link on the page, flags the dead 404s and 410s, and shows each external domain's Ahrefs Domain Rating, so you can see at a glance which dead links are worth chasing. It works the other way too — point it at your own pages to find dead links before your readers and Google's crawler do.
What the statuses mean
A broken link checker is only useful if you trust its verdicts. Here is exactly what each label means, so you know which ones to act on and which to double-check by hand.
- Broken (404, 410, other 4xx): the page is gone. This is the actionable signal — a dead link to fix on your own site, or an opening for broken-link building on someone else's.
- Blocked (401, 403, 429): the server is up but refused our automated request. Bot protection, a login wall, or rate-limiting. The link may be perfectly fine in a browser — open it before calling it dead.
- Server error (5xx): the destination server errored out. Often temporary. Worth a re-check later rather than an immediate fix.
- Unreachable: the host didn't resolve, refused the connection, or timed out within a few seconds. Could be a dead domain or a slow one.
- OK (2xx): the link resolved to a working page, following redirects to its final destination.
- DR (Ahrefs Domain Rating): for each external link we also show the destination domain's DR (0–100) where we have it cached, plus the DR of the page you scanned. A dead link on a high-DR page, or pointing at a high-DR domain, is the kind of broken-link-building opportunity worth your time. Uncached domains show a dash until we look them up.
What it does not do: it checks one page at a time, up to 50 links, not a whole site. It reads what an automated crawler sees, not a logged-in browser. And it can't tell you whether a working page is the right page — only that it loads. For a recurring whole-portfolio watch, that's a different job (see below).
How to use it for broken-link building
- Find a relevant resource page — a "useful links", "tools", or roundup page in your niche that's likely to have aged out a few links.
- Paste its URL and check. Read the summary strip: how many links, and how many came back broken.
- Filter to broken external links. Each row shows the dead URL and its anchor text — that anchor tells you what the page was trying to link to.
- Pitch your replacement. Email the page owner: "Your link to X is dead, here's a working page on the same topic." A real favor, not cold spam.
New to the tactic? Our guide to broken-link building walks through finding the right pages, qualifying a dead link before you get excited, and writing a pitch an editor will actually accept — with realistic hit rates, not hype.
Why dead links matter for SEO
Outbound links to dead pages don't sink your rankings on their own, but they erode the two things that do move them. Readers who hit a 404 leave; that's a bounce and a worse signal than a slow page. And every dead URL a crawler follows on your site is crawl budget spent on nothing — budget that could have gone to a page you actually want indexed.
Broken backlinks pointing at you are the costlier version of the same problem. A link you earned that now 404s on the linking side — or that points at a page you've since moved — is equity leaking away quietly. This tool checks the links on a page you can see; watching the links pointing at your site over time is what our monitoring product does.
Frequently asked questions
What does the broken link checker actually do?
It fetches the page you give it, finds every link on it — internal and external — and makes a quick request to each one to read its HTTP status. Links that return 404 or 410 are flagged as broken; the rest are labeled ok, blocked, server error, or unreachable. For external links it also shows the destination domain's Ahrefs Domain Rating where we have it. It checks up to 50 links per scan, so it is a per-page check, not a whole-site crawl.
What is broken-link building, and how does this help?
Broken-link building is finding a dead link on someone else's page, then emailing the owner to suggest your own working page as the replacement. Run a relevant resource or links page through this tool, filter for broken external links, and you have a short list of openings — each with the dead URL and the anchor text it used.
A link shows 'blocked' — is it broken?
Not necessarily. Blocked means the server answered with 401, 403, or 429 — it is up, but it refused our automated request (bot protection, a login wall, or rate-limiting). The link may load fine in a normal browser. Open it yourself before you treat it as dead.
Why does it only check up to 50 links per page?
Each scan makes a live request to every link, so an unbounded checker would be a load weapon pointed at the sites it checks. Fifty links per scan keeps it fast and fair. For a full-site audit across thousands of URLs, a desktop crawler or a monitoring product is the right tool.
Does it follow redirects?
Yes. A link that 301-redirects to a working page is reported ok at its final status; a link that redirects into a 404 is reported broken. We read the destination, not just the first hop, and show the status code we landed on.
Is checking internal links useful too?
Yes. Broken internal links waste crawl budget and send readers to dead ends. The tool labels each link internal or external, so you can fix your own dead links and pull broken-link-building targets from the external ones in the same pass.
What is the DR column?
DR is the Ahrefs Domain Rating (0 to 100) of each external link's domain, plus the DR of the page you scanned, shown at the top. It is a quick read on authority: a dead link on a high-DR resource page, or pointing at a high-DR domain, is a better broken-link-building opportunity than one on a site nobody links to. We use the free, domain-level Ahrefs metric and read it from our cache, so a domain we have not looked up yet shows a dash rather than a number — common domains fill in over time. It is not a full Ahrefs profile, just the one authority number.
Last updated: 2026-06-16