Skip to content
Webmaster Tools
SEOBroken Link Checker

Broken Link Checker

Check every link on a page or sitemap.

Checks up to 100 links in about 45 seconds at most. Each address can run 2 link checks a minute.

This tool finds dead links. Give it a web page and it reads every <a href> on it, resolves relative links against the page address (or its <base href>), drops duplicates and fragments, and skips mailto:, tel: and javascript: links. Give it a sitemap instead and it reads the <loc> URLs, following a sitemap index one level down.

Up to 100 links are checked, 8 at a time, with a HEAD request. When a server refuses HEAD (405 or 501) the link is retried with GET. Redirects are followed, up to 10, and the final address is shown. Each link gets 10 seconds and the whole run about 45 seconds; any link not reached in time is marked Not checked.

Results are grouped as OK (2xx), redirected (2xx after one or more redirects) and broken (4xx, 5xx, DNS failures, timeouts and TLS errors). Requests come from our server, so links to private or internal addresses are blocked and show as broken.

How to use it

  1. Enter a page URL, or a sitemap such as https://example.com/sitemap.xml.
  2. Select Check links and wait up to a minute.
  3. Use the filter to show only broken links or redirects, then fix them at the source.

Examples

Common questions

Some sites block automated requests or rate-limit them. Open the link in a browser to confirm before you change it.

Should I fix redirects?

Usually. Linking straight to the final URL saves a round trip for visitors and crawlers.

Each run makes real requests to other servers. For a large site, check its sitemaps or key pages one at a time.