Free External Link Checker — Find Broken Outgoing Links

What Are External Links?

External links (also called outbound links) are hyperlinks that point from your website to a page on a different domain. When you link to Wikipedia, a news article, a government resource, or any other website, you are creating an external link. These links serve as references, citations, and connections between websites across the internet.

External links are a fundamental part of how the web works. They allow users to discover new resources, verify claims, and explore related topics. For search engines like Google, external links provide important signals about the quality, relevance, and credibility of your content. A page that links to authoritative sources demonstrates research depth, while a page with broken or irrelevant outbound links signals poor maintenance.

Unlike internal links (which connect pages within your own site), external links send users and search engine crawlers to another domain entirely. This distinction matters because external links pass "link equity" (also known as PageRank or link juice) to the destination site, which can influence both your site's and the destination site's search rankings.

Why External Links Matter for SEO

Google has confirmed that outbound links to authoritative, relevant sources can help your own rankings. In Google's Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, the concept of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) emphasizes the importance of citing credible sources. Pages that reference authoritative resources demonstrate expertise and build trust with both users and search engines.

External links also help search engines understand the topical context of your page. When you link to related resources on a specific topic, you create a semantic signal that helps Google categorize and rank your content appropriately. For example, a medical article that links to NIH studies, medical journals, and hospital websites sends strong topical signals about health-related content.

Broken External Links and Their Impact

Broken external links (returning 404 Not Found, 500 Server Error, or network errors) are one of the most damaging issues for both user experience and SEO. When a visitor clicks a link and lands on an error page, their trust in your content diminishes immediately. They may leave your site entirely, increasing your bounce rate and reducing engagement metrics that Google uses as ranking signals.

From an SEO perspective, broken outbound links signal that your content is outdated or poorly maintained. While Google has said that a few broken links won't significantly impact rankings, a pattern of broken links across your site can reduce your overall quality signals. Regular auditing of external links should be part of your routine SEO maintenance, ideally monthly for high-traffic sites.

Our External Links Checker uses a HEAD-to-GET fallback method to accurately detect broken links. Some servers block HEAD requests (returning 403 or 405), so we retry with a GET request to avoid false positives. We also exclude 429 (rate-limited) responses from broken link counts, as these indicate the destination server is temporarily limiting requests rather than the page being permanently unavailable.

Understanding Nofollow, Sponsored, and UGC Attributes

The rel attribute on links tells search engines how to treat the relationship between your page and the destination. There are three key values that every webmaster should understand:

A critical mistake many websites make is "blanket nofollowing" — adding rel="nofollow" to all external links. This practice signals to Google that you don't trust any of your sources, which can appear manipulative. Google recommends keeping editorial links (those you genuinely endorse) as follow links, and only using nofollow/sponsored/ugc on the appropriate link types.

Since 2020, Google treats nofollow as a "hint" rather than a directive. This means Google may choose to follow and count nofollow links if it believes they are editorially relevant. However, proper use of these attributes remains an important best practice and is required for sponsored content to comply with Google's link spam policies.

Redirecting External Links

When an external link returns a 301 (permanent redirect) or 302 (temporary redirect), it means the URL you linked to now points somewhere else. While redirects don't create the same poor experience as broken links, they add latency for users and may break if the redirect chain changes in the future.

Best practice is to update redirecting links to point directly to the final destination URL. This improves page load speed (eliminating the redirect hop), ensures link equity flows efficiently, and makes your content more resilient to future changes. Our checker uses redirect: 'manual' in fetch requests to detect redirects that would otherwise be silently followed.

Anchor Text Best Practices for External Links

Anchor text is the clickable text of a hyperlink. For external links, descriptive anchor text helps both users and search engines understand what the linked resource contains. Generic anchors like "click here," "read more," or "this page" provide no context and represent a missed SEO opportunity.

Good anchor text should be concise, descriptive, and naturally integrated into your content. Instead of writing "To learn about link building, click here," write "Learn about effective link building strategies from Moz's comprehensive guide." This provides context for users, helps screen readers for accessibility, and gives search engines relevant anchor signals.

Empty anchors (links with no text) and image-only links without alt text are even worse than generic anchors, as they provide zero context. Our checker flags all external links with generic or missing anchor text so you can improve them systematically.

External Links in Navigation

External links placed in navigation areas (header, footer, or sidebar menus) appear on every page of your website. This means they pass PageRank to external domains from every single page, which can significantly dilute your site's link equity. While some navigation external links are appropriate (like social media profiles or partner logos), excessive external links in navigation can harm your SEO.

If you must include external links in navigation, consider adding rel="nofollow" to non-essential ones. Keep editorial external links within your page content where they provide the most contextual value. Our checker identifies all external links in navigation contexts so you can evaluate whether each one belongs there.

Security Attributes: Protecting Your Users

When an external link opens in a new tab (using target="_blank"), the opened page can access your page's window.opener object. This enables a security vulnerability called "reverse tabnapping," where the external site can redirect your original tab to a phishing page. Adding rel="noopener" prevents this by blocking access to the opener object.

Modern browsers (Chrome 88+, Firefox 79+, Safari 12.1+) automatically apply noopener behavior to target="_blank" links, but explicitly adding the attribute ensures compatibility with older browsers and demonstrates security awareness. It's also a good practice to combine noopener with noreferrer for external links: rel="noopener noreferrer".

How Many External Links Should a Page Have?

There is no official limit on external links per page, but best practices suggest keeping outbound links under 25 per page. Pages with excessive external links can appear spammy to search engines and dilute the PageRank flowing to your internal pages. Google's John Mueller has stated that while there's no hard limit, it's important that external links add genuine value for users.

The ideal number depends on your content type. A resource page or directory might legitimately have dozens of external links, while a standard blog post typically works best with 3-10 well-placed outbound links to authoritative sources. Focus on quality over quantity — each link should serve a clear purpose for the reader.

On the other end, having zero external links on content pages can also be a negative signal. Pages with no outbound links appear isolated and may lack the credibility that comes from referencing authoritative sources. Our checker evaluates your external link coverage to identify pages that could benefit from relevant outbound references.

External Link Audit Checklist

Regular external link audits help maintain your site's quality and SEO health. Here is a comprehensive checklist for auditing your outbound links:

External Links vs. Internal Links vs. Backlinks

It's important to distinguish between three types of links that affect SEO:

A well-optimized website manages all three link types effectively. External links demonstrate credibility, internal links build site architecture, and backlinks establish domain authority. Regular auditing of each type is essential for maintaining strong search engine performance.