Broken link checker
Stop finding broken links. Start fixing them.
Every other broken link checker hands you a list and walks away. Linkilo finds the dead links, sorts them by how much traffic they are costing you, and gives you six ways to fix each one, including an autopilot that can clear the whole list while you make coffee.
Included in every plan. 30-day money-back guarantee.
23 hard broken 7 need review 11 redirected
3,633 links scanned · last run 2 hours ago
The job, as it stands
What a broken link checker for WordPress actually saves you
Export every link on the site. Check them. Work out which failures are real and which are a server that blocks bots. Open each post, find the link, decide what to replace it with, paste, save. Then find the other thirteen posts with the same dead link.
By hand, that means
- Export every link on the site: internal, external, images and embeds.
- Request each one, and retry the ones that time out.
- Sort the real 404s from servers that block bots and redirects that still resolve.
- Open each post, find the link, decide whether to fix it, replace it or take it out.
- Search every other post for the same dead URL, because it is in more than one.
- Do it again next month, because links die after you checked them.
Linkilo does every step of that.
What it costs to leave it
A dead link costs you twice. The reader hits a 404 and leaves, and the page that linked out leaks the authority it was passing. Neither shows up in anything you look at daily, so the count climbs for months before anyone notices.
Somebody has to do that: you, or somebody you pay.
What you get back
A day or two of clicking, every time you audit, and the audit you keep putting off.
What it looks like instead
The dead links are listed with what went wrong. You fix one, and it is fixed everywhere it appeared.
How soon
A full scan runs in the background; the first results are there before it finishes.
Who does the work
Deterministic
No model involved. Every link is requested and the response code recorded, with 403s and rate-limits kept apart from genuine 404s so a site that merely blocks bots is never called dead.
Time figures describe the shape of the job (an afternoon, a day, a week), not a promise about your site. Your archive is your archive.
Broken links do not announce themselves. They just quietly bill you.
A supplier redesigns their site. A page gets deleted. A slug changes during editing. Nothing on your end breaks visibly. You simply start losing visitors, rankings and credibility, and you find out months later when the traffic graph dips.
What a dead link actually does
- Visitors hit a 404 and most of them never come back
- Search engines read dead links as a neglected site and adjust accordingly
- Link equity leaks out of your best pages into nothing
- Manual checking takes hours and still misses links inside images and embeds
- You fix the same dead domain thirty times because it is on thirty posts
What happens once Linkilo is watching
- Dead links surface in a queue before a visitor ever meets one
- The list is ordered by the traffic each link is costing you
- One decision fixes a URL across every post that uses it
- Links, images and embedded video are all checked, not just anchors
- If a fix was wrong, one click puts it back
Built around what you do after you find a broken link
Finding them is the easy part. Everything below is about the part every other tool leaves to you.
“Which broken link should I fix first?”
Connect Search Console and the list sorts by the clicks the page holding each link actually gets. You fix the expensive ones first instead of working alphabetically.
“What do I replace it with?”
The AI picks the most relevant page from your own site. It is forbidden from inventing a URL, so every suggestion is a real, live page you already have.
“The source is gone for good. Now what?”
Pull the last archived snapshot from the Internet Archive in one click. Your citation survives even though the original page did not.
“It is one of my own URLs that moved.”
File a 301 straight into the Redirection manager instead of editing content, and every existing link keeps working.
“There is no good replacement at all.”
Strip the link and keep the anchor text. Your sentence still reads correctly, and you are no longer pointing readers at nothing.
“Can I just fix all of them?”
Yes. Pick a strategy, choose review-first or apply-automatically, and the autopilot works through the entire list with one-click undo on the whole run.
“How do I know it is really broken?”
A HEAD request, then a GET fallback, then a confirming retry on timeouts and rate limits. Servers that merely block bots are never mislabeled as dead.
“What about links inside images and videos?”
Checked too. HTML links, image sources and embedded video from YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion and Google Video, across whichever post types you choose.
“Does the scan die if I close the tab?”
No. Scans run in the background and resume where they left off when you come back. No host-specific cron configuration required.
“What about links that work but redirect?”
Optionally flagged as their own bucket, so you can point them straight at the final URL. Better for crawl budget, and 301s are never mislabeled as broken.
“Will it email me when something breaks?”
One Email Notifications screen controls every Linkilo email. Choose recipients and whether each report sends on completion or as a digest. No mail plugin required.
“What if the autopilot gets one wrong?”
Every run is reversible. Content edits take a rollback snapshot first, and the whole batch can be undone in one click.
Detect, prioritize, fix. All inside WordPress.
Three stages, and the plugin does the heavy part of all three.
Detection you can trust enough to automate
Most checkers produce so many false positives that nobody dares act on the list. A server that rate-limits bots, a site behind Cloudflare, an endpoint that is slow rather than dead: all of them get reported as broken, and after the third wrong answer you stop believing the tool.
Linkilo runs a HEAD request first, falls back to a GET, then re-checks anything that timed out or came back rate-limited before calling it broken. That is why the autopilot is safe to hand the whole list to: the detection underneath it is accurate enough to act on without a human double-checking every row.
- HEAD then GET, with a confirming retry on timeouts and 429s
- Three status buckets: hard broken, needs review, redirected
- Auth-walled and transient failures separated from genuine 404s
- HTML links, images and embedded video all checked
- Scans survive a closed tab and resume automatically
g2.com/products/…/reviews
1 · HEAD 403 Forbidden
2 · GET fallback 403 Forbidden
3 · confirming retry 200 OK
Needs review not broken
The server blocks bots. The page is fine.
The list is ordered by what it is costing you
A broken link on a page nobody visits is a tidiness problem. A broken link on the post that brings in 1,240 clicks a month is a revenue problem. Treating them as equal is why link cleanup never gets finished.
Connect Search Console and Linkilo sorts every broken link by the traffic of the page it sits on. The first ten rows you fix are the ten that were actually hurting you, which means the work pays for itself before you get bored of it.
- Traffic prioritization from Search Console clicks
- Repeated URLs grouped, so you triage each one once
- Every affected post listed with its anchor text and surrounding sentence
- Filter by post type, status bucket or link type
oldsupplier.com/pricing · found in 14 posts
Fix all 14 Select posts
Six ways to fix it, in the order professionals actually use
Click Fix on any link and Linkilo offers the options that make sense for that specific link, rather than a single generic text box. An internal URL that moved wants a 301. A dead external citation wants the Wayback snapshot. A link with no good replacement wants unlinking, not deleting the sentence.
This is the part that turns a report into a finished job, and it is the reason people stop running a separate link checker at all.
- AI replacement from your own pages, never an invented URL
- Search your content and repoint by keyword, no AI required
- Paste a working URL and rewrite it across every post that used the dead one
- Create a 301 in the Redirection manager for internal URLs that moved
- Wayback snapshot when an external source is gone for good
- Remove the link, keep the text when nothing fits
Dead link: oldsupplier.com/pricing
Search my content Paste a URL
Create 301 Wayback copy Unlink
Hand the whole list to the autopilot
Nobody wants to click Fix forty-five times. Choose a strategy, decide whether you want to review before it commits or let it apply as it goes, and Linkilo works through the entire backlog.
Smart cascade tries each fix type in the sensible order and falls back gracefully. Or constrain it: Wayback only for a research-heavy archive, AI internal for a site with deep content, remove all when you just want the dead weight gone. Every run is undoable in one click.
- Four strategies: smart cascade, Wayback only, AI internal, remove all
- Review first, or apply automatically
- Runs in safe batches so shared hosting survives it
- One-click undo on the entire run, not just row by row
Strategy
Smart cascade Wayback only AI internal Remove all
How to apply
Review first Apply automatically
29 of 45 checked · 21 fixed · 8 skipped
The broken link report, exactly as it ships.
Dead links grouped by the URL that broke, every page linking to it listed underneath, with the status code that proves it and the fix applied without leaving the row.
- Broken Link CheckScan your site for broken links, set up scheduled scans, and view scan results in real time.
- Which Links to CheckChoose which types of links to include when scanning: HTML links, images, embedded videos, and more.
- Historical DataView past scan results and track broken link trends over time with charts and statistics.
Scheduled ScanSet up automatic broken link scans that run on a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule.
Instant ScanRun a broken link scan immediately without waiting for the next scheduled scan.
Enable ReportingGet email notifications when scans complete, so you can stay on top of broken links.
Hard broken
23
Needs review
71
Links scanned
14,208
Last scan
2 hours ago
| Status | Post | Anchor | URL | Type | Code | Impact | Actions | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broken | Best Cigar Humidors of 2026 We cross-checked supplier pricing before settling on the top pick. | supplier pricing | https://oldsupplier.example/pricing | External | 404 | 1,880 clicks | ||
| Broken | Travel Humidor Buying Guide Check the TSA guidance before you fly with a full travel case. | TSA guidance | https://tsa.example/rules-2019 | External | 410 | 96 clicks | ||
| Review | Cigar Humidity Chart (69% vs 72%) The numbers in the original study were measured at 70F. | the original study | https://journal.example/humidity | External | 403 | 640 clicks | ||
| Review | How to Season a New Humidor Spanish cedar from reputable cedar suppliers seasons fastest. | cedar suppliers | https://cedar.example/stock | External | 429 | 212 clicks | ||
| Redirect | Boveda vs Beads: Which Actually Holds? See our humidor guides for the storage side of the equation. | humidor guides | https://yoursite.com/old-category/humidors/ | Internal | 301 | — | ||
|
Picks the most relevant page from your own site. Never invents a URL. AI suggests: Humidor Buying Guide — same topic as the dead pricing page, and it already ranks for the anchor. Click Apply replacement to use it.
Sends readers to archive.org instead of the original. Prefer a live URL when one exists. | ||||||||
What Auto-fix does before it touches anything
Auto-fix broken links
Works through every broken link with the strategy you choose. Reversible fixes are logged so you can undo a run.
21 fix(es) proposed. Review below, then Approve all & apply.
| https://oldsupplier.example/pricing | → | AI: Humidor Buying Guide |
| https://tsa.example/rules-2019 | → | Wayback 2024-11-02 |
| https://yoursite.com/old-category/humidors/ | → | AI: Best Cigar Humidors of 2026 |
No broken links found
Your site looks healthy. Run a scan to check again, or hit "Re-check now" to revalidate the existing list.
Recreated from templates/broken_link_table_v2.php. Same buckets, same statuses, same actions.
The numbers that separate finding from fixing
Who this actually changes the week for
Link rot is universal, but what it costs you depends entirely on what your site is for.
Ecommerce
Discontinued products leave dead links across every buying guide you wrote.
With Linkilo: they repoint to the live category before a shopper hits a dead end.
Publishers
Ten years of archives citing sources that no longer exist.
With Linkilo: Wayback snapshots preserve the citation instead of deleting it.
SEO pros and agencies
Link audits are a manual deliverable on every single retainer.
With Linkilo: the audit and the fix are the same screen, with client-ready exports.
Affiliate sites
A merchant restructures and two hundred monetized links die at once.
With Linkilo: grouped by URL, fixed in one pass, sorted by the pages that earn.
After a migration
Half your internal links still point at the old URL structure.
With Linkilo: find and repair them all before Google recrawls the site.
Anyone on shared hosting
Big scans time out or get you a warning email from your host.
With Linkilo: capped background batches that resume rather than hammering the server.
Most tools find broken links. That is where they stop.
The difference is not detection. It is everything that happens after detection.
| Capability | Linkilo | Typical link checker |
|---|---|---|
| Finds broken links | Yes | Yes |
| False-positive protection (HEAD → GET → retry) | Yes | No |
| Separates redirected from broken | Yes | No |
| Sorted by traffic impact | Yes | No |
| Checks images and embedded video | Yes | Sometimes |
| AI replacement from your own pages | Yes | No |
| Wayback archive recovery | Yes | No |
| Creates a 301 instead of editing content | Yes | No |
| Unlink but keep the anchor text | Yes | No |
| Fix the entire list automatically | Yes | No |
| One-click undo on a whole run | Yes | No |
| Background scans that survive a closed tab | Yes | Varies |
| Email alerts without a mail plugin | Yes | Varies |
Most people install Linkilo and remove their broken link checker, redirect plugin and related-posts plugin in the same afternoon. See everything it replaces.
From install to a clean link profile
No server access, no crawl exports, no spreadsheet.
Scan accurately
Scheduled or instant scans crawl every link, image and video, with confirming retries so the results are trustworthy enough to act on.
Prioritize
Connect Search Console and high-traffic broken links float to the top, so the first thing you fix is the thing costing you most.
Fix, your way or automatically
Work the list with the guided six-option fix panel, or hand it to the autopilot and approve the run in one click.
Then stop thinking about it
Schedule the scan, set an email notification, and link rot becomes something you are told about rather than something you discover.
The things people ask before they trust it
Mostly variations on “is it safe to let software edit my content?”, which is the right question to ask.
No, and it cannot. The AI only chooses from your own existing published pages and is explicitly forbidden from generating a URL. Every suggestion is a real, live internal page. This is a hard constraint in the code, not a prompt instruction it might drift from.
That is exactly why review-first mode exists, and why undo covers a whole run rather than one row. Before any content edit Linkilo takes a rollback snapshot, checks you have permission to edit that specific post, and replaces only the exact href rather than rewriting surrounding text. Start in review mode, look at what it proposes, and switch to automatic once you trust it.
This is the failure mode that makes most checkers useless, so it gets the most engineering. A HEAD request, a GET fallback, then a confirming retry on timeouts and rate limits. Sites that block bots land in “needs review” rather than “broken”, and 301s are separated out instead of being reported as dead.
No. Scans run in the background in capped batches, sized so shared hosting survives them, and they resume rather than restarting if they are interrupted. Nothing runs on a visitor request.
No, and running both is worse than running neither, because you get two sets of scans hitting the same external servers. Linkilo replaces it and, unlike that plugin, repairs what it finds rather than only reporting it.
Add an ignore rule by URL text or by domain, and domain rules cover subdomains too. Matching items leave the open queue immediately. Rules use simple pattern matching rather than user-supplied regex, so they stay predictable and cheap to evaluate across thousands of rows.
Every change is written to an audit log with the post, the anchor, the old destination and the new one, and every bulk action keeps a per-post backup of the original content.
Only for traffic prioritization. Without it everything still works, the list is simply ordered by severity rather than by what each link is costing you.
Yes. The free broken link checker scans any single page in your browser with no signup. It is the same detection logic at one-page scale. The plugin is what runs it across your whole site, on a schedule, with the fixing.
Redirection Manager
Catch 404s as they happen and redirect them before anyone notices the traffic went missing.
Bulk Update URL Tool
Change one URL and Linkilo updates every link pointing at it, across your whole site, in seconds.
Crawl Log File Analyzer
See exactly which pages Google and the AI crawlers actually visit, inside WordPress, with no log files to download.
Broken Link Checker (free)
Scan any page for dead links in seconds. No signup, no email.
Every dead link on your site, fixed this afternoon.
Run one scan, work a queue that is already grouped and sorted by what it is costing you, and pick from six ways to fix each one. Or let the autopilot clear the whole list while you do something better.
30-day money-back guarantee. Every feature is included in every plan.