Dead Link Checker has three modes of operation:
- Site check - a free service allowing you to check a single web page or a whole website for broken links.
- Multi check - a free service, requiring a login, which can check multiple websites and send a report by email.
- Auto check - a subscription service which scans a number of websites automatically, unattended, and on a user-specifed schedule. Reports are emailed or available online.
Dead Link Checker can detect the following types of dead or broken links:
- Page not found - a requested web page can not be found on the specified domain. Frequently produces error code 404.
- Timeout - the server for the specified web page did not return any information within a specified time interval.
- Server error - the server encountered an error when trying to serve the page. Frequently produces error code 500.
- Redirection (301, 302, etc.) to a non-existent page.
- Any other error condition that may cause a webpage not to be displayed.
When a dead link is detected and reported, there will generally be some text associated with it to help you locate the broken link in your HTML source code. If the link was from an HTML anchor (A) tag, the text will be the contents of the tag, i.e. the clickable text that appears in the browser.
If the broken link was the result of a redirection (301, 302, etc.) then the description includes the link that was redirected. If more than one redirection occurred, then each step is listed.
If the link came from some other tag, such as the 'src' field of an image (img) tag, then the description will include the type of tag that contained the link.
Other HTML elements which are scanned for bad URL links include:
- applet/codebase
- area/href
- audio/src
- blockquote/cite
- body/background
- button/formaction
- command/icon
- del/cite
- embed/src
- form/action
- frame/src
- frame/longdesc
- head/profile
- html/manifest
- iframe/src
- iframe/longdesc
- img/src
- img/longdesc
- input/src
- input/formaction
- ins/cite
- link/href
- object/classid
- object/codebase
- object/data
- q/cite
- script/src
- source/src
- video/poster
- video/src
In addition, Dead Link Checker verifies URLs specified using the url() field in external CSS files, inline "style=" tags, and within HTML <style> elements.
MULTI CHECK
Multi Check enables you to run Dead Link Checker through multiple websites in one go. The report is then emailed to you automatically.