Arclab® Website Analyzer
How to Find and Fix Broken Links
HTTP 404 (Page not found) Errors
in Your Web Pages
What are "Broken Links" and what means "HTTP 404"?
The web server responds with status code 404 if a web page or resource is not available on the server. Put simply, this means that a requested file is not available or does not exist on the web server. It is important to understand that this does not only refer to HTML pages, but can refer to any resource (e.g. a JPG image). In other words, there is a broken link on one of your web pages or a resource linked on your web pages is unavailable.
What causes "Broken Links"?
- The most common cause is simply a typo in one of your web pages.
- A file on the web server was renamed, moved, or deleted.
- As your website grows or is edited frequently, "broken links" are almost unavoidable, which makes it all the more important to check and fix your website frequently.
- For external links, the page has been deleted, the page has been moved, or the website is no longer available at all.
How can I Find and Fix "Broken Links" on My Website?
Troubleshooting is easy with Arclab® Website Analyzer.
First, let the program scan your website.
After the scan of your website is completed, you will receive a detailed
report containing all errors found on your website and other information:
In the "Broken Links HTTP 404 (Page not found)" line, click "Show Details" to display details about the errors:
- In the report, each broken link or non-existent URI is shown with status code 404. In this example: (A).
- Under (B) "URI linked from" you will find the web pages or URIs that refer to the broken link or non-existent URI.
- This means that every web page or resource listed under (B) contains an incorrect or broken link to resource (A).
- In order to fix the problem, you would have to edit the web pages (B) and fix the incorrect or broken link (A) there accordingly.
- This can be not just a link to another page, but also a JPG image, for example.
- It is therefore easiest to search the source code of each web page (B) for the occurrence of the URI (A) and to correct it accordingly.