broken links
Outgoing links and images that return 404 or fail to connect hurt user trust and waste crawl budget
What it is
crawler.sh flags a broken link when an outgoing anchor or image on a crawled page points to a URL that returns 404, 410, 5xx, or fails to connect entirely. The check uses lightweight HEAD requests against external URLs so it does not slow down the main crawl significantly. This is check #23 in the SEO analysis.
Why it matters for SEO
Broken outgoing links signal poor site maintenance to search engines:
- Crawl budget - Search engine crawlers follow outgoing links. Every broken link wastes a crawl slot that could have been used on a working page.
- Link equity - Links that resolve to errors pass no authority. Any PageRank flowing through a broken link is lost.
- User trust - Visitors who click a link and land on a 404 page lose confidence in the site’s content quality.
- Indexing signals - A high number of broken links may cause search engines to crawl the site less frequently.
Why it matters for AEO
AI answer engines evaluate source quality before citing a page. A page riddled with dead links looks outdated and unreliable, making AI systems less likely to reference it. Clean outgoing links reinforce the page’s authority and increase the chance it gets cited in AI-generated answers.
How to fix it
- Remove or replace links that point to permanently gone resources.
- Update URLs to the new location if the target page has moved.
- Add redirects on your own site if you control the target domain.
- Use the Wayback Machine to find archived versions of disappeared content and link there instead.
For images, replace broken src URLs with working assets or remove the <img> tag entirely.
Disable the check if you want to skip outgoing link verification:
crawler crawl https://example.com --no-check-outgoingWhat crawler.sh reports
In the CLI, broken links appear under the “Broken links” section of crawler seo output. Each entry shows the affected page URL and the broken target URL. In the desktop app, they appear in the SEO Issues card with the same detail.
Tip: Fix 404 and 5xx broken links first - these are the most impactful. Timeout failures may be temporary and worth rechecking.
