Free tool
404 Page Checker
Scan one page for dead internal and outbound links, and see where each one pointed.
How it works
What is the 404 Page Checker?
The 404 Page Checker is a free tool that checks the links on one web page and shows the HTTP status code each one returns. It lists every link with its anchor text, marks working links green, and marks failed ones red with their real status, such as 404, 403 or 500, or No answer when the server never responded.
How to use the 404 Page Checker
- Paste the URL of the page whose links you want to check.
- Press Check links. The tool reads up to 60 unique
<a href>links from the page and requests each one. - Read the table. Each row shows the link, its anchor text and a status: green means the link loaded, red shows the error code.
- Fix the red rows. Update or remove 404 and 410 links, and open any 403 or No answer link in your browser before deciding.
How do you find 404 errors on a page?
Request every link on the page and read the status code each one returns. This checker does that for up to 60 unique links, in the order they appear in the HTML, and shows the final status after following redirects, so a link that redirects to a live page reads as working.
Unlike the Broken Link Checker, which lists only the dead links, this shows every link with its anchor text. That helps you find the link on the page when you go to edit it, and a link with no text is labelled Image / Button.
What do the link status codes mean?
A 2xx code means the link works. 404 means the page was not found and 410 means it was removed on purpose: update or remove those links. 401 and 403 mean access was refused, and 429 means too many requests, both of which often point to bot protection rather than a dead page.
A 5xx code is a server error on the other site, which may be temporary. No answer means the server never responded, or the domain could not be reached at all.
How do you test your own 404 page?
Request a made-up URL on your site, such as curl -I https://example.com/this-page-does-not-exist, and confirm the response is 404 or 410.
If a missing page returns 200 instead, it is a soft 404: a not-found message served with a success status. Google flags these in Search Console and leaves them out of the index, but only after spending crawls to find them.
Questions
- What is a 404 error?
- A 404 error is the HTTP status code a server returns when it cannot find the page at a URL. It usually means the page was deleted or moved without a redirect, or the link has a typo.
- Do 404 errors hurt SEO?
- 404 errors do not hurt a site's rankings on their own, since a 404 is the correct answer for a URL that does not exist. They cost you when your own pages still link to them, which wastes crawls and sends visitors to a dead end.
- What is a soft 404?
- A soft 404 is a page that tells visitors it does not exist but returns a 200 success status instead of a 404. Google treats it as an error, and it can treat a redirect from a missing page to the homepage as a soft 404 too.
- What is the difference between 404 and 410?
- A 404 means a page was not found, while a 410 means it is gone on purpose and will not return. Both remove the URL from Google's index, so 404 is a sound default and 410 suits content you deliberately deleted.
- What is the difference between 404 and 403?
- A 404 means the server cannot find the page, while a 403 means the server refuses to serve it. In a link check, a 403 often comes from bot protection, so open the link in a browser before treating it as broken.
- How do I find 404 errors on my whole website?
- To find 404 errors across a whole site, check the Not found (404) list in Google Search Console's Page indexing report, or run a site crawler. Use this checker to see the status of every link on a page you are editing.
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