Check broken links on your site with this free tool

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Xenu‘s the program(for windows) I’m talking about. I’ve tried a bunch of link checkers including those pretentiously online ones. This is the one that’s really working to solve your problem. And free!

Download it from here, or you might also want to check its page for FAQs and other instructions.

Install and run it. “File” -> “Check URL…”, then configure the starting point of your website, usually this could be your website URL, and click OK. You are now on it.

Done! You are asked if you want a report or not. Of course. And Xenu opens it in the form of a web page. It then prompts you for an orphan check on your FTP site, simply ignore it by clicking Cancel. Ok, you should be in front of the report page now.

Other decent web-based link checkers include:

1. W3C Link Checker: only the specified page is checked, no hopping interpagely.
2. SiteOwner.com Link Checker: the famous Microsoft bCentral toolkit, one page at a time.
3. Link Valet: a link checker since long long ago, in a galaxy far far away … It gives you the answer after all the checking is done, so be patient while your browser’s loading like forever.
4. The hawknest Basic Link Check: one page at a time, and neatly presents only the faulty links.
5. 2bone Link Checker: very fast link checker, you can choose to receive results in a single page or dozens of pages.
6. Ranks.nl Link Checker : a modification of W3C Link Checker.

Aside from these online link checkers, you can also find a FireFox addon, LinkChecker to do the job for you. It checks all links on the page you are visiting and distinguish them with different colors to tell which ones are broken.