Ever clicked on a link that leads nowhere? A dead page. Maybe a 404 error. Maybe just… silence. Frustrating, right?
Now imagine that happening to someone browsing your site. They click, expecting something useful. Instead—boom—dead end. That’s not just bad UX. It’s bad for SEO too.
This is where a broken link checker tool earns its keep.
You’re not just doing this for search engines. Sure, Google doesn’t like broken internal links—makes sense. But it’s the real people clicking around your site who’ll bounce the second they hit one.
Link rot is real. Pages go down. External resources disappear. URLs change. And unless you're manually checking every single one of your links regularly (which... you’re not), stuff will slip through. That's not neglect. That’s just how websites age.
So, what do you do?
You grab a tool. Something like our Broken Links Finder at ToolsBox.
There’s no dashboard full of graphs to decode. No account to create. Just paste in your website URL, hit scan, and let the thing do its thing.
Our tool crawls your site, digs through every visible link—internal and external—and tells you which ones are busted. Broken hyperlinks. Dead anchor tags. Bad redirects. Whatever mess is lurking under the hood.
It doesn’t fix anything for you, though. You’ll still need to update your pages. But at least now you know where the issues are.
Honestly? Website owners. Content managers. Bloggers. Devs. Even SEO agencies.
If you're running a blog, and you’ve got articles from 3 years ago with outbound links... odds are, some of those are toast. Same thing for portfolio websites that link to external projects or client pages. Stuff disappears. Domains expire.
And internal links? They’re tricky. You might’ve changed a page’s slug six months ago and forgot to update the old link somewhere else. No big deal... unless you’re trying to build topical authority and Google bots keep running into 404s.
Internal links that no longer work
External links pointing to expired domains
Links with 404, 403, or timeout errors
Bad redirect chains
URLs with syntax issues (extra slashes, missing protocols, etc.)
It doesn’t touch JavaScript-based dynamic links. Yet. Still working on that part.
Extensions are okay. But they’re kinda clunky if you’re dealing with large websites. And the premium tools? They’re overkill for most people. You don’t need a full site audit suite just to fix a few broken links.
Our tool is straightforward. Light. Free. No signup. No credit card screen halfway through. Just open it, scan, fix your stuff, and move on.
If you’re doing a quick cleanup before launching a site, or prepping a domain for sale, or just trying to tidy up your blog archive—this saves you the headache.
You might not realize how many redirects you’re stacking. Or how many old PDF links you’ve got floating around from ten redesigns ago. A website link checker helps surface these.
Also helps with:
SEO housekeeping
Improving crawlability
Boosting UX scores (hello, Core Web Vitals)
Preventing backlink waste if you're linking to dead resources
Oh, and if you’re trying to improve your domain’s trust score, yeah—cleaning up broken links helps. Not a magic wand, but a step in the right direction.
But you do need to check on it now and then.
Broken links don’t announce themselves. They just quietly mess things up. And your visitors won’t tell you. They’ll just leave.
Using a dead link checker every few weeks? Easy habit. Five-minute task. Keeps your site lean. Clean. Actually functional.
No bloat. No unnecessary popups. Just utilities. Straightforward ones.
So yeah, if you need to clean up a bunch of links before a relaunch, or you’re auditing someone else’s site, or even just curious—run your URL through our Broken Links Finder.
It doesn’t ask questions. It just works.
How often should I check my site for broken links?
Depends how often you update it. For blogs or resource-heavy sites, maybe once a month. For static sites, once a quarter is fine.
Does this tool check PDFs or documents for links?
Nah, it only checks links on live web pages. If you need document-level crawling, that’s a whole other thing.
Can this find links in JavaScript buttons or hidden menus?
Not currently. It grabs HTML-rendered links. JS-based or dynamically injected stuff might not show.
Is this free to use? Like… really free?
Yep. No hidden charges, no trials, no fake limits. Just use it.
What do I do after finding a bunch of broken links?
Go into your CMS or code and update or remove them. There’s no auto-fix button—somebody’s gotta do the dirty work.