Free Link Verification

Broken links can be the kiss of death for a Web site. Although most users are willing to overlook one or two dead links, if your site has more, it's unlikely visitors will return. But this is the Web, and Web pages come and go and move regularly, with no notice to you, so how do you keep your links from going dead?

You can't. But you can catch them right away and then either remove or correct them. And you don't have to click every link on your site to see if it works, you can use an automated tool to do that for you.

Some site building suites have link checking built in. Both Homesite and FrontPage2000 will check links for you. But if you're not using one of these, there are other, free online options you can use.

The way these tools work is that you put in the URL of the page you want checked. The program will then run through the page, follow all the links, and generate a report showing links that don't work, or that it was unable to determine (due to time outs, for example) work. Then you can investigate and fix those links.

Most of the free link checkers are only going to let you check one page at a time. On a multi-page site, this can be tedious. So if you have a lot of pages to check, you might want to consider upgrading to a paid tool that will automate the process for every page on your site. But if you only a few pages, or more time than money, the free, one-pagers will do the trick.