Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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.]
- topic:timeago_earlier,3 years
-
How awesome is that Screaming Frog tool?
- topic:timeago_earlier,8 months
-
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?
- topic:timeago_earlier,11 months
-
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.
- topic:timeago_earlier,about a year
-
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.
- topic:timeago_earlier,about a month
-
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
-
Trying to find all internal links to a specific page (without index)
Hi guys -- Still waiting on Moz to index a page of mine. We launched a new site over two months ago. In the meantime, I really just need a list of internal links to a specific page because I want to change its URL. Does anybody know how to find that list (of internal links to 1 of my pages) without the Moz index? I appreciate the help!
Technical SEO | Jan 28, 2023, 11:30 AM | marchexmarketingmcc1 -
Is there a limit to Internal Redirect?
I know Google says there is no limit to it but I have seen on many websites that too many 301 redirects can be a problem and might negatively affect your rankings in SERPs. I wanted to know especially from people who worked on large ecommerce site. How do they manage internal redirect from one URL to other and how many according to you are too many. I mean if you get a website that contain 300 plus 301 redirections within the website, how will you deal with that? Please let me know if the question is not clear.
Technical SEO | Sep 3, 2015, 10:53 AM | MoosaHemani0 -
Why are these internal pages not showing any internal links?
If you look at Author profile pages like this one, http://experts.allbusiness.com/author/denise-oberry (THE top contributor on the site with over 82 posts under her belt), or any Author profile page, they show zero internal links or Page Authority. The same goes for most posts for each author on the site. Author pages should show internal links from every post the author has on the site. And specific posts should also have internal links from categories, etc. Yet they show zero. The only posts that show internal links and PA are ones that were either syndicated to the root domain's homepage, or syndicated to Fox Small Business. ZERO internal links. Does anyone know why this is? The root domain does not act this way with Author pages and posts. And I see nothing blocking links or indexing via the robots.txt file or page level nofollow tags. A real head scratcher for this SEO nerd, that I'm sure someone here will have a really simple answer to.
Technical SEO | Sep 24, 2014, 3:41 PM | MiguelSalcido0 -
Ok to internally link to pages with NOINDEX?
I manage a directory site with hundreds of thousands of indexed pages. I want to remove a significant number of these pages from the index using NOINDEX and have 2 questions about this: 1. Is NOINDEX the most effective way to remove large numbers of pages from Google's index? 2. The IA of our site means that we will have thousands of internal links pointing to these noindexed pages if we make this change. Is it a problem to link to pages with a noindex directive on them? Thanks in advance for all responses.
Technical SEO | Jul 12, 2013, 4:15 AM | OMGPyrmont0 -
Tool to search relative vs absolute internal links
I'm preparing for a site migration from a .co.uk to a .com and I want to ensure all internal links are updated to point to the new primary domain. What tool can I use to check internal links as some are relative and others are absolute so I need to update them all to relative.
Technical SEO | Jun 12, 2013, 6:05 PM | Lindsay_D0 -
Dofollow and Nofollow links
What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow links? I know that some sites/blogs only let you post nofollow links. In such a case how do I know if a comment I posted on a certain site will be a nofollow or dofollow? How about big traffic sites such as Huff Post. Do they only allow nofollow links?
Technical SEO | Oct 16, 2020, 10:51 PM | greenfoxone0 -
How to find and fix 404 and broken links?
Hi, My campaign is showing me many 404 problems and other tools are also showing me broken links, but the links they show me dose work and I cant seem to find the broken links or the cause of the 404. Can you help?
Technical SEO | Oct 26, 2012, 4:32 PM | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Add to Cart Link
We have shopping cart links (<a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p"></a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">The SEOMoz site crawls are flagging these as a massive number of 302 redirects and I also wonder what sort of effect this is having on linkjuice flowing around the site. </a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">I can see several possible solutions: Make the links nofollow Make the links input buttons Block /cart/add with robots.txt Make the links 301 instead of 302 Make the links javascript (probably worst care) All of these would result in an identical outcome for the UX, but are very different solutions. What would you suggest?</a>
Technical SEO | Mar 12, 2011, 12:48 AM | Aspedia0