Broken links quietly cost you rankings and trust
Every 404 is a dead end for a visitor and a wasted crawl for a search engine. Sites accumulate them constantly: a page gets renamed, a product is retired, an external article you linked to goes offline. Nobody notices until a customer emails about it — or until rankings slip.
Most free checkers test a single URL. That misses the real problem: the broken link hiding on page 14 of your blog. LinkPatrol reads your sitemap.xml, fetches each page, extracts every link, and verifies each one with a real HTTP request — then hands you a clean list of what's broken and where.
What you get in the report
- Broken links — internal and external links returning 4xx/5xx, with status codes
- Redirect chains — links that work but redirect; fix them to save crawl budget
- Images missing alt text — the accessibility and SEO quick win
Then keep checking
A one-time scan is a snapshot. Re-run it anytime — it's free, no signup. Sites over 25 pages: higher-limit plans are in progress — see plans for status.