Broken Link Checker

A link that leads nowhere is the quickest way for a website to feel abandoned — a menu item that lands on "page not found", a picture that never loads, a partner's website that has moved. The Broken Link Checker reads every page of your website and lists each one, with the page it is on, the words of the link, where it points and why it failed. You can fix a link right there, forward an old page address to a new one, or hand the whole list to Max.

Opening it

Open the builder's main menu (the ☰ button at the top of the left rail) and choose Tools → SEO → Broken Link Checker. A panel opens in the bottom-right corner of the builder and starts checking straight away. Every time you open it, it checks your website again, so it always describes your pages as they are right now — the draft your dev site shows, whether or not you have published it.

The check takes a moment on a small website and a little longer on a large one: the panel first reads your pages, then asks every other website you link to whether its page is still there, and shows how far it has got. You can keep working while it runs. If the check cannot finish, the panel says so and offers Try again.

What it checks

• Links to your own pages — a link to a page of your website that does not exist. An old address you have already redirected counts as working.
• Images and files — a picture, video, audio file, stylesheet, script or download (a PDF, say) that your page loads from an address nothing answers.
• Links to other websites — an address somewhere else that answers "not found" or has gone away.
• Anchors — a link to a section (#pricing, on the same page or another one) when no section on that page has that name.

Email and telephone links are left alone, and so are files that live in your Media Library. A link to another website on Max AI Builder — a second website of yours at its free address, say — isn't checked either.

Each broken link appears once, however many pages carry it: a dead link in your header is one problem on twelve pages, not twelve problems, and the panel names the pages. The list shows the words of the link (or the picture's description), where it points, and the reason.

"Couldn't be checked"

A link to another website is only called broken when that website says so — including a page that moved and now lands on "not found". One that times out, blocks automated visits, or is rate-limiting is listed separately under Couldn't be checked, with what happened — it may well work for a visitor, so open it in your browser before changing anything. A website with a great many links to other websites has the first few hundred checked; the panel says how many were left out.

If nothing is broken, the panel says so.

Fixing a link

Every result offers what fits it:

• Edit link — type the new destination and save. The link changes where it is written, so it changes on every page that carries it, and your website is rebuilt. The edit is kept in each file's revision history, so it can be undone like any other change. A link that Max's code writes out for you (one that comes from a setting rather than a page) cannot be edited this way; ask Max instead.
• Create a redirect — for a link to a page of your website that no longer exists, pick the page visitors should land on instead. This adds a rule to your website's redirects, under the same rules and the same limit of 100 as the Plugins page, and takes effect at once on your dev site and your live site. The link itself is left as it is.
• Ask Max to fix — tick the links you want help with (the broken ones are ticked for you) and choose Ask Max to fix. The list goes to the assistant as one message, naming each link, and Max works through them — pointing a link at the right page, replacing a missing picture, adding a missing section name, or finding where a partner's page went.

Or do nothing: the list is a report on its own, and closes with Close.

A fixed link disappears from the list, the rest of the list stays where it is for the next one, and the next check confirms them all. Changes to your pages land in your draft, so your dev site shows them at once; your live site changes when you publish.

Who can use it

Anyone who can edit the website can use the Broken Link Checker, on every plan. Team members with the Viewer role can't open the builder, so they can't use it either.

Next

• Redirects — every redirect your website has, and the rules they follow.
• Page settings — changing a page's address in the first place.
• Remote File Search — the other tool under Tools: files your website still loads from someone else's server.