Broken links waste crawl budget, leak authority, and burn visitor trust. The Site Audit finds both kinds - your own pages returning errors, and outbound links pointing at dead destinations - and shows exactly which pages link to each broken target so fixes are mechanical.
Internal: Pages Returning Errors
Every crawled page's HTTP status is checked. Failures land in two checks:
- 4xx Errors - the URL is wrong or the page is gone (404 and friends). These are error-severity findings.
- 5xx Errors - your server failed while responding. Intermittent 5xx during a crawl is worth investigating even if the page loads for you now.
Each finding lists the failing URL and the pages that link to it, so you can fix the source links, not just the symptom. Your sitemap is cross-checked too: sitemap URLs that error out get audited and reported even if no page links to them.
External: Outbound Links to Dead Sites
The audit also probes your outbound links (up to 100 external destinations per audit) and raises a Broken External Link finding for each one that returns a definite error, with the HTTP status, the dead URL, and every page of yours that links to it.
One deliberate behavior: destinations that block automated requests - 401, 403, 429, LinkedIn's 999 and similar - are not flagged. Those links work fine for real visitors; social share buttons and login-walled pages used to generate false positives, so the audit only reports links that are genuinely dead.
Redirects
The Redirect Status check reports pages that respond with a redirect. Redirects aren't errors, but they deserve review:
- Update internal links to the final URL. Linking through a redirect costs an extra request on every click and crawl.
- Collapse chains. A redirect pointing at another redirect multiplies the cost and dilutes signals; point everything at the final destination.
- Use 301s for permanent moves. Temporary redirect types don't consolidate ranking signals the way permanent ones do.
Fixing Workflow
- Fix or redirect dead internal pages. If the content moved, 301 the old URL to the new one. If it's gone for good, either restore something useful at that URL or let it 404 and remove the links to it.
- Update the linking pages. The linked-from list in each finding is your checklist - edit those pages to point at working URLs.
- Replace or drop dead outbound links. Find a live equivalent or remove the reference.
- Re-check cheaply. A Single Page Audit (6 credits) on an edited page confirms the fix; the next scheduled full audit confirms nothing regressed.
FAQ
Why isn't a link I know is broken in the report?
External probing is capped at 100 destinations per audit, and the linking page must be within the crawl's page limit and depth. Anti-bot responses are also deliberately excluded.
Are redirects bad for SEO?
A single permanent redirect is fine and normal. Chains, loops, and internal links that route through redirects are the problems worth cleaning up.
How often should I check for broken links?
Put audits on a schedule (weekly or monthly) and watch the 4xx/5xx and Broken External Link counts between runs - see Scheduling Regular Audits.
