Best free tool to check internal broken links
-
Question says it all I guess. What would your recommend as the best free tool to check internal broken links?
-
[Spammy comment removed by forum moderator.]
-
How awesome is that Screaming Frog tool?
-
Hey Kevin,
If you download the CSV report, we should list the referring page in the CSV. I know it'd be better to have it on the on-screen report, and it is on our wish list, but you should be able to see the info in an export.
-
Hi Kevin
Thanks - yes, although I am a Moz Associate, out of full transparency I agree with that you are saying. It is not a tool I specifically use with Moz, and do prefer Screaming Frog for the exact functions you are referring to. Screaming Frog will tell you what pages the bad links are on.
You can definitely pass this on to the product team as a feature request on this page. Personally I love tools like their analytics, keyword difficulty, rank tracker, open site explorer, but I agree from this aspect the crawler is not the strongest, and I would suggest supplementing with Screaming Frog (as I do).
-Dan
-
Dan, although I love me some MOZ the crawl diagnostics kinda suck... all they do is report errors but they don't give any insight on where the bad link is originated... it merely shows the page which is 404ed, which is a BIG FAT WASTE OF TIME.
You guys should know that we need to know WHICH PAGE THE BAD LINK IS ON, and furthermore WHAT LINE OF CODE HAS THE BAD LINK. Who cares about the broken page!?!?!?!?!?
-
Yes when you set up a campaign with Moz Analytics, Moz will crawl your website and return a whole report of suggestions. It will start a sample crawl which gets returned to you pretty quickly, and a full crawl a little bit thereafter. It will report things to you like 400 errors etc.
You can also use the Moz Crawl Test (PRO only as well) which will return to you the HTTP status code of each URL crawled.
Optionally, you can also use Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free up to 500 pages to crawl, paid for bigger sites).
-Dan
-
Does anyone have any clue on how I can check my internal broken links using MOZ tools?
-
Hello,
If you have a full Sitemap, transform it to a .txt by putting only URL (Excel can do that easily) try Screaming Frog SEO on list mode, which is free regardless of the number of links.
Even if you search a free tool, I strongly recommand to invest 99£/year on this tool, it's worth it.
-
Ok, first, does the url with /errors/error_404 (without the query string) exist?
Also - are you using something to create your 404 pages for tracking purposes?
The query string on the url would appear to be stating the referring url anyway - hence ?q=-i3 basically equates to the page /i3
At a guess - it could be there is a script running to create logs on specific 404's, or create a new log each time one occurs - if this folder is visable to the crawlers, it would get spidered and subsequently the problem would arise.
-
Yeah I tried that but the URL in the URL coloumn shows for example:
/errors/error_404?q=-i3
and the Referrer shows:
/-i3
Neither page exists and so I do not know where the page which contains this broken link is...
-
It does, when you get the report, filter column D marked "4XX (Client Error)" and you will see your 404's there - further along in the report you will also be able to see referring url which will show you which page is linking to it.
-
Checked out the tool I just linked to on here and it doesn't include broken link data
-
Is the the custom crawl tool on here you are referring too? http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/crawl-test
-
Custom crawl right here on SEOmoz, or you could use Xenu
-
Hi Dan,
Thanks for that tool. It works great and especially like that it works in Chrome.
Do you however know of a tool which would do this site wide rather than per page?
-
This tool is a great extension for Chrome
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Broken canonical link errors
Hello, Several tools I'm using are returning errors due to "broken canonical links". However, I'm not too sure why is that. Eg.
Technical SEO | | GhillC
Page URL: domain.com/page.html?xxxx
Canonical link URL: domain.com/page.html
Returns an error. Any idea why? Am I doing it wrong? Thanks,
G1 -
"One Page With Two Links To Same Page; We Counted The First Link" Is this true?
I read this to day http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 I thought to myself, yep, thats what I been reading in Moz for years ( pitty Matt could not confirm that still the case for 2014) But reading though the comments Michael Martinez of http://www.seo-theory.com/ pointed out that Mat says "...the last time I checked, was 2009, and back then -- uh, we might, for example, only have selected one of the links from a given page."
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays
Which would imply that is does not not mean it always the first link. Michael goes on to say "Back in 2008 when Rand WRONGLY claimed that Google was only counting the first link (I shared results of a test where it passed anchor text from TWO links on the same page)" then goes on to say " In practice the search engine sometimes skipped over links and took anchor text from a second or third link down the page." For me this is significant. I know people that have had "SEO experts" recommend that they should have a blog attached to there e-commence site and post blog posts (with no real interest for readers) with anchor text links to you landing pages. I thought that posting blog post just for anchor text link was a waste of time if you are already linking to the landing page with in a main navigation as google would see that link first. But if Michael is correct then these type of blog posts anchor text link blog posts would have value But who is' right Rand or Michael?0 -
Why my external links are zero
What could be the possibility that my Moz crawler showing zero external link for my website http://ultimatecharter.com, i have build many links from different website and when i click them it goes to the website. My website is multi language and the landing page is http://ultimatecharter.com/en/home can this be a possible issue? regards Aqeel
Technical SEO | | Aqeel0 -
Best way to use affiliate links
What is the best practice to use amazon affliate links in blog posts? I have read different opinions on this, and want to be sure I'm using best practices. I sometimes link to amazon with an affiliate link on some of my posts, and am working on a top ten Christmas gift ideas for Children born with Down syndrome with lots of affiliate links on it. I'm want to be sure I'm using best practices when adding links like this. Tanks!
Technical SEO | | NoahsDad0 -
HTTP301 or link ?
We have a page on a website (let's name it ABC) which ranks very well on Google for a specific keyword but this keyword is not the main activity of website ABC. For this reason we created website XYZ for offering the services related to the specific keyword. How shall we redirect the visitors from website ABC to website XYZ so XYZ gets all the weight ? Is it best to do an HTTP301 from the specific page on site ABC or from site ABC, remove nearly all content related to the keyword and create a link to website XYZ ? Your advice is well appreciated.
Technical SEO | | netbuilder0 -
How do I know which page a link is from
I've got an interesting situation. I hope you can help. I have a list of links but I'm not sure which pages of my site they are from. How do I know which page a specific link is from? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | VinceWicks0 -
Tool?
Hi mozzers, I was wondering if theres anything out there that would crawl a site and sort your pages into the number of words they have?
Technical SEO | | PeterM220 -
Snagged an Expired Domain Best way to get all the Link Juce?
Found a PR4 domain that had expired and not been renewed. Best way to get all the link juice from it? just 301 the whole thing to MY main domain?
Technical SEO | | bozzie3110
