Strange Results Comparing Free Tools for 404 Broken Links
Hello everybody here comes my monthly post
Checking for broken links
These last weeks have been interesting, to say the least, so I thought it a good idea to tell you about my findings.
It started with checking my websites to see how they rank. Luckily there was some improvement.
At the bottom of the test result, I read: Crawled Flag/False. I asked the question and was told it has to do with broken links. You will be able to find free tools on the internet to check and identify these broken links.
When a visitor clicks on a video and it is not available anymore that gives a bad impression. You can say the same about broken links. It is a good idea to regularly check your links. Obviously when your websites grow there will be a lot to check.
I have the following system. I am rotating the posts of both my websites. When I put them up for getting comments I check if all is ok. Sometimes I add something, perhaps a photo or some more text. I check if all the links work etc. Checking links is something I have added to my check up as I am now aware it is very important.
The first free link tool was Atomseo
Their website is not complicated, you type in your website URL and shortly afterward you will be presented a list of broken links. So I started to click on the posts with the bad links but it turned out this company was not correct. Most of the bad links were perfectly ok. So, I was not happy with the result.
The second free link tool was Free Broken Link Checker
Their list was completely different from Atomseo, there was not 1 bad link they agreed on. I started checking the results but still was not satisfied as they came up with things which functioned perfectly well.
The third link tool was Dr. Link
That one I did not like at all. The whole website was black, not appealing at all plus it looked more complicated than the first 2 free tools. I did not check my website with this tool.
The fourth one was Broken Link Checker, dead link checker
The first website took 4 hours to check and give the result. It checks up till 2000 URLs for free. The second website was done in 30 minutes. Why there was such a difference in the time I have no idea. as both my websites have the same content volume.The second time I checked the same website it was a lot faster. The list was rather long and came up with different links compared to the previous free tools. What this tool found was correct but I did not follow all their advice
It is not only the 404 which means = not found
There are other numbers like a 402 = payment required. That one I did not change as it was a link to a museum and somewhere on their site it tells you what the entrance fee is. It can also mean that on that website, there might be a captcha.
You might also find Time Out = too slow to open but not broken. In that case, you check if it is really that slow and weigh it against how important you think it is to keep that link.
There was one result which I did not understand and therefore cannot correct. It has to do with the font of your website = the type of letters you write with. But was is wrong with it I have no clue, perhaps somebody knows this.
404 Not Found - https://fonts.googleapis.com/ - link/href
Both my websites have the same theme and I write with the letter type it comes with.
Here is a list from their website which tells you what each number means.
https://www.deadlinkchecker.com/error-codes.asp
Personally, I liked this free tool best as what they came up with was the correct result. I also discovered that if you have a website in English it does not seem to be appreciated when you put a link to a website in Spanish or any other language. I then try to find a link to a similar source but in English.
So there you have it. Checking different free tools can be confusing but it remains a fact that a broken link is not positive for ranking.
Greetings from the south of Spain, Taetske
Photo Source : Pixabay
Recent Comments
89
Thanks Taetske, I have to check my websites too, it's been quite a while since I have done this.
Enjoy your day😀
Good evening Loes,
Thanks for stopping by.
As you can see Sonny and me we both have the same technical knot, meaning the same result with the test. Site Support answer did not convince me.
Greetings from the south of Spain, Taetske
Hey T, yes indeed, any way you slice it...broken links are bad for business, thnx for sharing.."
M
Good afternoon Michelle,
Thank you for stopping by.
What I find strange is that 3 different tools give 3 different results, not funny but I at least found a good one.
Greetings from thje south of Spain, Taetske
Good Morning Leslie,
Thank you for stopping by and your comment.
Greetings from the south of Spain, Taetske
Good Morning Sonny,
Happy to hear you find this helpful.
Greetings from the south of Spain, Taetske
When I made the comment last nite, I was on my phone and decided to reread it this morning and I am now using the dead link checker. I will post a screenshot when done. :). So far, 1 failed.
Sonny
Good afternoon Sonny,
I see you have the same thing as I have, do not know how to fix that first one.
Take into consideration that comments are also checked. I had sent somebody a link which was not ok anymore.
Greetings from the south of Spain, Taetske
I sent the screenshot also to Site Support with a message but I haven't heard back from them yet.
Sonny
They replied and asked me to send them the hard link. I just finished sending them so I will let you know when I have heard back.
Sonny
They responded back, Can you please tell us where exactly are you scanning your website?
I sent this,
manna4star2about an hour ago
It all started last nite with a Blog by Laparra1,,, Strange Results Comparing Free Tools for 404 Broken Links,,,
Strange Results Comparing Free Tools for 404 Broken Links
This morning I went to the link she suggested and ran the test myself, on my whole site. ,,, https://www.deadlinkchecker.com/
The results I posted back to you were the final results.
Sonny
Then I received this,
SiteSupportabout an hour ago
Sonny,
You will have to ignore this warning because to fix this you need to disable elementor and ultimate-social-media-icons plugin on your site.
This I can do and see what happens. I do not use Elementor plugin and they said I can use any other social media plugin.
I will run it again after I remove those 2 plugins.
Sonny
Here is the screen shot of what you see when you click on it
Do you also see that when you click on yours?
I do not think it has to do with plugins.
Taetske
Ok, I just d/l a different one that was compatible with my version of WP. I just noticed the one I had was not.
And I just ran the test again.
So, there you see, we have the same issue.
I really do not think it has to do with any plugin.
My Technical Manager says it has to do with http versus https and it is a call to Google for them to supply fonts.
We use for both websites The Notes Light theme, what do you have? I think I will have to ask this as a question and see what happens.
Taetske
I sent that to them with the 3 links and this is the Reply I just received,,,
SiteSupport11 minutes ago
Sonny,
We have blocked the xmlrpc.php file on the server due to security reason and due to that, you are getting 403 error for this file.
Regarding fonts.googleapis.com URL, Your site theme NewsCard is using the google fonts and due to that fonts.googleapis.com URL is added the in theme files.
So I am content that they know what they are talking about.
I will keep that Tool and use it from time to time.
Sonny
Thank you Sonny,
To tell you the truth I do not know yet. I will also send Site Support the results from the test for both websites, let's see what they say.
Taetske
Sounds good. I have been too concerned with trying to increase my Site Speed and then with this, I have gotten nothing else done today. I need to get some articles written or at least get my mind headed in that direction right now. Let me know what Site Support says.
Sonny
I tried to run the test for both websites at the same time but that is not possible. They stopped one but the other is still being checked.
Sonny, this is the reply from Site Support. I will now stop thinking about this.
Good Night, Taetske
Good evening Rosana,
I hope your list was not too long and that it did not cause you any headache
Greetings from the south of Spain, Taetske.
As both my websites have 71 posts and nearly 1300 comments there was some work to be done but I got it nearly all fixed.
All the best, Taetske
Holy Cow! as we say in the United States.
A little off subject but did you get all those comments by following the training here?
Good Morning Rosanna,
I started in WA January 2017. About 1 month later I got my 2 com,s not realizing to immediately have 2 websites is a bit much but at that time I had no clue about anything anyhow.
During these years I had longer "rest periods" = stop writing posts, as I would discover I urgently needed to do this or that and that would mean revise everything from top to bottom.
My personal friends were not the ones who would make comments, traffic was small so then I discovered Site Comments.
I do not remember exactly when I started doing that, I think it was
August 2017 and only a few each month. In 2018 I got more serious about getting comments. I try to make 2 comments a day. So that is how it happened.
As the comment is added to the post it makes your post longer. When you use a broken link tool it also checks all the comments your website has.
Greetings from the south of Spain, Taetske
Hi Taetske
Thank you for this valuable information and for doing all the hard work.
It's good to see you again.
Chuck
Good evening Chuck,
Hey, who do I see here? Good to see you too. You got a little bit lost/invisible so to speak these weeks.
It was not hard but more frustrating to see that those free tools had different findings. Anyhow, I got it sorted out and in the future only will use number 4. Did you see my previous post on spring in Spain? That for sure is nicer on the eyes than broken links.
Good afternoon Bob,
Thank you for stopping by and your comment.
These tools are great but when you discover they give different results it can get a bit frustrating.
All the best to you too.
Greetings from the south of Spain, Taetske
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Good Morning Fleeky,
I hope you do not have too many broken links on your site.
I have not seen you around much lately and Keisha has also disappeared from the scene.
Greetings from the south of Spain, Taetske
I am not Keisha...