Broken URL Finder?

Question

Is there a broken-URL finder application that I could use to scan a website for broken links? (A Mac application would be better.)

Answer 1

For Windows users: Xenu

For *nix/Mac: wget (usually installed by default)

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Update: Typical wget usage:

wget -r --spider -b -o /var/tmp/wget.log http://target.site.com/

• -r - Recursive download
• --spider - Check downloaded content for new links, then discard
• -b - Run in the background
• -o /var/tmp/wget.log - Target log file
• http://target.site.com/ - Replace with the site you want to check

wget will create a log file detailing the status codes reported while downloading content from the target site - note that this method will catch links to nonexistent content from within the domain, however, off-site links will not be checked (which is why it pays to monitor your site's error logs).

Answer 2

The W3C Link Checker is one of the oldest online services that checks for broken links.

Answer 3

You could also try A1 Website Analyzer (Windows tool, but can run in VMWare/Fusion under Mac) It can tell you of all URL references site-wide (e.g. which pages link to a 404 URL + usually also line numbers), HTML/CSS errors etc.

Answer 4

This recursive HTML validator: http://htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/

should show you broken links among other errors. The tool can also be installed locally.

Answer 5

Google Webmaster tools will report on broken links. It's a simple tool, free to install to a website.....and platform agnostic. If you're not already using it, it can help you boost your SEO and useability as well.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en