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How to use this tool

Outbound Link Checker & External Link Audit

How to use the external link checker

Back to the tool

One pass lists every link that leaves your site; a second pass fetches only the destinations you keep.

  1. 01

    Enter the pages whose outbound links you want listed

    Single mode reads one page and runs on Enter. Switch to Bulk to paste up to 10 pages, one per line. What you paste are the pages to be read, not the links to be checked. Links that stay on your site, move to a subdomain, or cannot be fetched at all — mailto:, tel: — never reach the table.

  2. 02

    Watch the table fill in, page by page

    Each page is one request, and rows land as each page comes back. The table opens with six columns; Area and Rel wait behind the column button, Source page appears when you paste more than one page, and Result with Actions arrive on the first check. One page starts measuring on its own, as far as the first 300 destinations; with several pages both status columns hold at — until you press the button.

  3. 03

    Filter down to the destinations worth fetching

    Every column header but URL, Anchor and Final URL opens the filter for its own column. Rel is the one that pays here: paid and user-submitted links carry a token, so that group measures on its own. Invert keeps what you did not tick, and the button below counts what the next run would fetch after duplicate destinations are merged.

  4. 04

    Check status in batches, and stop whenever you want

    A run covers up to 300 unique destinations in batches of 30, and the broken count above the table climbs as each batch lands. Pause keeps every measurement already taken, and the button then offers to continue with the rest. Nothing in this table is yours, so a run here only ever touches servers you do not own.

  5. 05

    Open a row for the full chain, then take the table with you

    View on any row opens what the columns had to shorten: the page the link sits on, then the whole chain — each hop with the address it went to and the code it answered, right down to where it ends. The column button drops the columns you do not need, Copy table copies exactly the rows and columns still on screen, and Export CSV takes every column whatever the table is showing.

How to read the external link report

Each row is one link from one of your pages to a site you do not control.

Result table columns

URL
The address this link points at, resolved against the page it sits on. Everything after a # is dropped before the fetch, so two links that differ only by anchor are measured once.
HTTP status
What the other site answered on the first hop. A cell reading meta means it replied in full and then pushed the reader on with a refresh tag.
Chain
The code at the far end of the chain. A badge like 2RD counts the redirects it took to get there — one hop alone shows no badge.
Final URL
Where the link really lands. A link that goes straight there reads — both here and in the column before it. On an outbound link a long chain often means the destination changed hands.

What the table says about each outbound link

Type
What sits inside the tag: text, an image, or neither. The third case is the one to fix — the tag is on the page, but there is nothing to click and nothing to tell the destination what it is about.
Anchor
The clickable text. It travels to the other site as your description of it, so the ones you cannot remember writing are the ones worth reading.
Source page
Which of the pages you pasted this link was found on. The column appears only when a run covers more than one page.
Area
The landmark the link sits inside, named by its tag: header, nav, main, aside, footer. An outbound link in nav or footer is on every page at once, which is rarely what anyone intended. unknown means no landmark wraps it.
Rel
The rel tokens the tag declares, written exactly as it wrote them. nofollow, sponsored and ugc all belong here, and paid or user-submitted links are meant to carry one. target=_blank without noopener shows in red beside them when a link opens a new tab without that guard.

Status code reference

200 OK
The destination answered. Nobody tells you whether the page still says what it said when you linked to it.
301 Moved Permanently
The destination moved for good, and on a site you do not own that often means the whole domain did. Worth opening before you keep the link.
404 Not Found
Nothing at that address any more. Outbound links rot quietly: this one worked the day you published it.