Most website owners don't know they have broken links until a visitor complains — or worse, until they notice a drop in traffic. Broken links accumulate silently over time. Pages get renamed, external sites go down, images get deleted from the media library. Here's how to find all of them.
Method 1: Google Search Console (free)
If you've set up Google Search Console (and if you haven't, you should — it's how you get found on Google), it already tracks some of your broken links.
- Go to search.google.com/search-console
- Click "Pages" in the left sidebar
- Look for pages with the status "Not found (404)"
This shows pages that Google tried to crawl but couldn't find. It won't catch every broken link (only ones Google has discovered), but it's a good starting point and it's data from Google itself.
Method 2: Browser extension (free, quick)
Browser extensions like "Check My Links" (Chrome) or "Link Checker" highlight broken links directly on the page you're viewing. You visit a page, click the extension, and it checks every link on that page in seconds.
Best for: Quickly checking a specific page. The downside is you have to manually visit every page on your site, which is impractical if you have more than a handful.
Method 3: Online crawlers (free, thorough)
Tools like Dead Link Checker (deadlinkchecker.com) and Broken Link Check (brokenlinkcheck.com) crawl your entire site automatically. Enter your URL, wait a few minutes, and get a list of every broken link with the source page and destination.
Best for: A one-time audit of your full site. These tools find internal and external broken links, broken images, and redirect chains. Some have limits on the number of pages they'll check for free.
Method 4: Antileak scan (plus full health check)
Antileak checks every link on your site as part of a comprehensive health scan. You get your broken links identified alongside speed issues, SEO problems, and security gaps — one scan covers everything.
The advantage over standalone link checkers is context: your report shows how broken links fit into your overall website health score and prioritizes fixes by impact.
What to do with the results
Once you have your list of broken links, prioritize by impact:
- Homepage and navigation links first. These affect every visitor
- High-traffic pages next. A broken link on a page that gets 500 visits per month matters more than one on a page that gets 5
- Internal links before external. You have full control over internal links and they directly affect your site's usability
- Recently broken links. These are likely causing active frustration — visitors remember what used to work
For the actual fix process — whether to redirect, update, or remove each link — see our step-by-step fix guide.
How often should you check?
At minimum, check for broken links monthly. If you're actively adding or updating content, check weekly. Content changes are the most common source of new broken links — every time you rename a page, move an image, or restructure your site, links can break.
The easiest approach is to use a tool that monitors automatically. Antileak's paid plans include daily monitoring with alerts, so you catch broken links before your customers do.
Start with a baseline scan. Run an Antileak scan right now to get a complete picture of your site's broken links. Then work through them one by one, starting with the highest-traffic pages. Your health score will improve with every fix.