Find the broken links and error pages on your site.
Broken links waste crawl budget, frustrate visitors, and leak authority into dead ends. RankForge crawls your site and reports every page returning an error or redirect. Paste your URL — free, no account required.
What does the broken link checker show you?
An example of what the broken link checker produces — your real result will use your site's data.
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Broken / error URLs
How does the broken link checker work?
From a URL to an answer in three steps — no setup, no spreadsheets.
Paste your URL
No account, no install, no plugin. Enter any URL and start — RankForge works the way a search engine does.
We crawl & map your site
RankForge crawls up to 100 pages, following internal links and building a map of how your pages connect.
Get your result
See the findings in minutes — with a plain-English explanation and the specific fixes a free account away.
What does this tool check?
What problems does this find?
The issues this check most often surfaces on real sites:
- Internal links pointing to 404 (not found) pages
- Redirect chains that waste crawl budget and leak authority
- Server errors (5xx) on pages that should resolve
What do I do after the check is complete?
These pages return errors instead of loading. They frustrate visitors and waste the time search engines spend on your site. Fixing or redirecting them recovers that value.
- 1
Start with the pages that matter commercially
Work down the list in order of how much you care about the page, not how bad the number looks. A flagged page nobody needs to find is not worth an hour of your time.
- 2
Fix the cause, not the symptom
Most findings here are structural: a page is unreachable, under-linked, or competing with another page. Adding one contextual link from a strong, relevant page usually fixes more than editing the page itself.
- 3
Re-run this check to confirm the fix landed
The check is free and takes a couple of minutes. Re-crawling after a change is the only way to know it worked — and the full audit tracks the difference between crawls for you.
Why broken link checker matters for SEO
Broken links waste the crawl budget search engines allocate to your site, create dead ends that trap link authority, and signal a poorly maintained site to both users and crawlers. Every 404 a visitor hits is a lost conversion, and every one a crawler hits is wasted attention that could have gone to your real content. Finding and redirecting them recovers that authority and improves how thoroughly and how often search engines crawl the pages you actually want ranked. On larger and older sites, broken links accumulate silently — a periodic check is basic, high-value maintenance.
How this compares to paid tools
Honest side-by-sides, including where each paid tool is genuinely the better buy.
More free SEO tools
Learn how to fix it
Guides from the RankForge Academy on what this check measures and what to do about it.
Browse the Academy →Broken Link Checker: frequently asked questions
What counts as a broken link?
A broken link points to a page that returns an error — most commonly a 404 (not found) or a 5xx (server error). These hurt user experience and waste the crawl budget search engines allocate to your site.
Why do broken links hurt SEO?
They waste crawl budget, create dead ends that trap authority, and signal a poorly maintained site. Fixing or redirecting them recovers authority and improves how thoroughly search engines crawl your content.
What does the full audit add?
The free check lists the error pages. A free account adds which pages link to each broken URL, crawl-efficiency analysis, the structural fixes, a client-ready PDF, and weekly re-crawls.
Run the broken link checker now
Free, no account required. Create a free account afterwards for the full audit and the specific fixes.