Best free tool to check internal broken links
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Question says it all I guess. What would your recommend as the best free tool to check internal broken links?
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This tool is a great extension for Chrome
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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?
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Custom crawl right here on SEOmoz, or you could use Xenu
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Is the the custom crawl tool on here you are referring too? http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/crawl-test
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Checked out the tool I just linked to on here and it doesn't include broken link data
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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Does anyone have any clue on how I can check my internal broken links using MOZ tools?
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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
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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!?!?!?!?!?
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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
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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.
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How awesome is that Screaming Frog tool?
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