How does the Website Link Monitor find broken links?

The Link Monitor crawls every page on your domain, extracts all anchor href and resource src URLs, then validates each one using a HEAD→GET→retry sequence. It sends requests with a real Browser User-Agent to avoid false positives caused by bot-blocking. Any link that returns a 4xx or 5xx status after all retries is flagged as broken.

What are the 5 link status levels?

Links are classified into five levels: Healthy (2xx OK), Redirect (3xx — the destination may need updating), Broken (4xx/5xx — confirmed dead), Potential (soft 404s or mismatch between HEAD and GET), and Timeout (server did not respond within the allowed window).

Does the Link Monitor check external links too?

Yes. The scanner checks both internal links (same domain) and external links (third-party URLs) found during the crawl.

Is Website Link Monitor free?

Yes, it is completely free with no account required. Create projects for as many websites as you need and run scans on demand.

Link Monitor

Monitor Your Website Links

Smart validation with HEAD→GET→retry. Browser user-agent. 5 status levels.

New Project

Loading projects…

What is Website Link Monitor?

Website Link Monitor is a free crawl-based link checker that visits every page on your domain and validates every internal and external link it finds. Unlike simple ping checkers, it uses a HEAD→GET→retry sequence with a real browser User-Agent — the same request pattern a human visitor would generate. This eliminates the false positives that plague other tools when servers reject HEAD requests or serve soft-404 pages with a 200 status.

Results are grouped into five status levels so you can prioritise fixes: confirmed broken links (4xx/5xx), redirect chains (3xx), potential issues (soft 404s or HEAD/GET mismatches), timeouts, and healthy links. Every project keeps a full scan history so you can track whether your site health score is improving over time.

The 5 link status levels

Healthy

2xx — link resolves correctly

Broken

4xx/5xx — confirmed dead link

Redirect

3xx — destination may need updating

Potential

Soft 404 or HEAD/GET mismatch

Timeout

Server did not respond in time

How smart validation works

Most link checkers send a single HEAD request and mark anything other than 200 as broken. The problem: many servers return 405 (Method Not Allowed) or 403 for HEAD requests even when the page is fine for a real visitor. Others serve a custom "page not found" page with a 200 status (soft 404). Basic checkers miss both scenarios.

Link Monitor's four-step validation pipeline:

HEAD request — fast status check with browser User-Agent
GET fallback — if HEAD fails or returns ambiguous status, follow up with a full GET
Retry — on timeout or transient errors, retry once before marking as broken
Content inspection — detect soft 404s by checking the response body for "not found" signals

Who should use it

🔍

SEO auditors

Broken links dilute link equity and signal poor maintenance to search crawlers. Fix them before they hurt rankings.

🛒

E-commerce sites

Product removals and category restructures leave orphaned internal links. Catch them before customers do.

✍️

Content publishers

External sources go offline over time. Periodic rescans ensure every cited link still resolves.

👨‍💻

Developers

Pre-launch audits catch broken staging URLs, wrong relative paths, and missing assets before go-live.

Frequently asked questions

How does the Link Monitor find broken links?

It crawls every page on your domain, extracts all anchor and resource URLs, then validates each using HEAD→GET→retry. Any link returning 4xx/5xx after all retries is marked broken.

Does it check external links too?

Yes. Both internal (same domain) and external (third-party) links found during the crawl are checked and reported.

What does the health score mean?

A 0–100% rating based on the ratio of healthy links to total links in the scan. 80%+ is green, 50–79% yellow, below 50% red.

Can I monitor multiple websites?

Yes. Create a separate project for each website. All projects are listed on the home screen with health score and last scan date.

Is there a page limit?

No hard page limit is enforced. Very large sites may take longer to crawl, but all discovered pages are scanned.