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        4. Best free tool to check internal broken links

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        Best free tool to check internal broken links

        Technical SEO
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        • RikkiD22
          RikkiD22 last edited by

          Question says it all I guess. What would your recommend as the best free tool to check internal broken links?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 5
          • Fahaddd
            Fahaddd last edited by

            [Spammy comment removed by forum moderator.]

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -2
            • sammond
              sammond last edited by

              How awesome is that Screaming Frog tool? 🙂

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • KeriMorgret
                KeriMorgret @Blue-Horizon last edited by

                Hey Kevin,

                If you download the CSV report, we should list the referring page in the CSV. I know it'd be better to have it on the on-screen report, and it is on our wish list, but you should be able to see the info in an export.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • evolvingSEO
                  evolvingSEO @Blue-Horizon last edited by

                  Hi Kevin

                  Thanks - yes, although I am a Moz Associate, out of full transparency I agree with that you are saying. It is not a tool I specifically use with Moz, and do prefer Screaming Frog for the exact functions you are referring to. Screaming Frog will tell you what pages the bad links are on.

                  You can definitely pass this on to the product team as a feature request on this page. Personally I love tools like their analytics, keyword difficulty, rank tracker, open site explorer, but I agree from this aspect the crawler is not the strongest, and I would suggest supplementing with Screaming Frog (as I do).

                  -Dan

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Blue-Horizon
                    Blue-Horizon @evolvingSEO last edited by

                    Dan, although I love me some MOZ the crawl diagnostics kinda suck... all they do is report errors but they don't give any insight on where the bad link is originated... it merely shows the page which is 404ed, which is a BIG FAT WASTE OF TIME.

                    You guys should know that we need to know WHICH PAGE THE BAD LINK IS ON, and furthermore WHAT LINE OF CODE HAS THE BAD LINK. Who cares about the broken page!?!?!?!?!?

                    evolvingSEO KeriMorgret 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 3
                    • evolvingSEO
                      evolvingSEO @Blue-Horizon last edited by

                      Yes when you set up a campaign with Moz Analytics, Moz will crawl your website and return a whole report of suggestions. It will start a sample crawl which gets returned to you pretty quickly, and a full crawl a little bit thereafter. It will report things to you like 400 errors etc.

                      You can also use the Moz Crawl Test (PRO only as well) which will return to you the HTTP status code of each URL crawled.

                      Optionally, you can also use Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free up to 500 pages to crawl, paid for bigger sites).

                      -Dan

                      Blue-Horizon 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Blue-Horizon
                        Blue-Horizon last edited by

                        Does anyone have any clue on how I can check my internal broken links using MOZ tools?

                        evolvingSEO 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • RetailMeNotFr
                          RetailMeNotFr last edited by

                          Hello,

                          If you have a full Sitemap, transform it to a .txt by putting only URL (Excel can do that easily) try Screaming Frog SEO on list mode, which is free regardless of the number of links.

                          Even if you search a free tool, I strongly recommand to invest 99£/year on this tool, it's worth it.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • IPINGlobal54
                            IPINGlobal54 @RikkiD22 last edited by

                            Ok, first, does the url with /errors/error_404 (without the query string) exist?

                            Also - are you using something to create your 404 pages for tracking purposes?

                            The query string on the url would appear to be stating the referring url anyway - hence ?q=-i3 basically equates to the page /i3

                            At a guess - it could be there is a script running to create logs on specific 404's, or create a new log each time one occurs - if this folder is visable to the crawlers, it would get spidered and subsequently the problem would arise.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • RikkiD22
                              RikkiD22 @RikkiD22 last edited by

                              Yeah I tried that but the URL in the URL coloumn shows for example:

                              /errors/error_404?q=-i3

                              and the Referrer shows:

                              /-i3

                              Neither page exists and so I do not know where the page which contains this broken link is...

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • IPINGlobal54
                                IPINGlobal54 @RikkiD22 last edited by

                                It does, when you get the report, filter column D marked "4XX (Client Error)" and you will see your 404's there - further along in the report you will also be able to see referring url which will show you which page is linking to it.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • RikkiD22
                                  RikkiD22 @IPINGlobal54 last edited by

                                  Checked out the tool I just linked to on here and it doesn't include broken link data

                                  IPINGlobal54 RikkiD22 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • RikkiD22
                                    RikkiD22 @IPINGlobal54 last edited by

                                    Is the the custom crawl tool on here you are referring too? http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/crawl-test

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • IPINGlobal54
                                      IPINGlobal54 last edited by

                                      Custom crawl right here on SEOmoz, or you could use Xenu

                                      RikkiD22 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                      • RikkiD22
                                        RikkiD22 @evolvingSEO last edited by

                                        Hi Dan,

                                        Thanks for that tool. It works great and especially like that it works in Chrome.

                                        Do you however know of a tool which would do this site wide rather than per page?

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                        • evolvingSEO
                                          evolvingSEO last edited by

                                          This tool is a great extension for Chrome

                                          Check My Links

                                          RikkiD22 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 5
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