Xenu’s Link Sleuth is a web scraping software that checks for broken links on sites. Developed by Tilman Hausherr, the link verification application looks for all URLs, images, backgrounds, frames, and maps present on a website so users can sort them by their preferred criteria. This video will show you how to use Xenu Link Sleuth to find broken website links on your site. It will analyze both internal a. Doubleclick the Xenu.exe program icon to open Xenu's Link Sleuth, or type the path and the xenu.exe filename in the 'Run' command found under the Windows 'Start' button. A Xenu window will appear on your desktop. You can now use Xenu's Link Sleuth to check for broken links. Under the File menu, select Check URL. Or, click on the white 'page. Xenu's Link Sleuth (TM) checks Web sites for broken links. Link verification is done on 'normal' links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets. It displays a continuously updated list of URLs which you can sort by different criteria. A report can be produced at any time.

Broken or dead links aren’t any good for search engines and your followers. To avoid the self-inflicted penalties that may arise from broken links, it’s advisable that you look for tools that will help you audit your links. The good news is that there are tools that you can use for free, while others come as premium versions. Even if you have just started a WordPress website, you need the user experience to be smooth and that your users can find whatever they search for in a hassle free manner.

The process of checking for broken links need not be a one off task. You need to regularly check and repair 404 links. If you have too many 404 links, its sends the wrong message to Google and your rank could suffer-an aspect that your serp rank checker tool will confirm. If your older posts have 404 notifications, broken link checker tools can help you redirect users to such posts and you never know the value that older posts could have. Here are 5 reliable broken link checkers for 2018.

1. Xenu Link Sleuth

Though it operates as a Windows only tool, it’s the perfect tool if you want a comprehensive crawling of your website. After the search, XENU returns with a horde of broken links that happen to be hidden out of sight. You get a detailed expose and the list of pages leading to the broken links such that you fix the pending issues. If you are looking for a superior, easy to use and dependable tool that checks your site for dead links, this is your go-to tool when you install this software; you only need to type in the name of the domain you want to check. You can choose the specific aspects that you want the tool to skip. After the crawling, all the errors found are marked in red and you can see the pages leading to the dead links

2. Broken Link Checker

Broken Link Checker is better viewed as a suite of tools and reporting software that is hosted in the Ahref’s Site Explorer. The Broken Link Checker tool is ideal, if you want to build a strong backlink portfolio while relying on a quick web fixing process. You can use the tool to find broken links whether they are inbound or outbound. You can use the tools on relevant websites to adapt links and make them work as your quality backlinks. With this tool, you no longer need a collection of plugins or browser extensions to build your broken links. Broken link checker is backed up by live backlinks, and it presents you with fast crawling speeds facilitated by AhrefBot. This tool will help you get all the dead link stats in one place. You will get real-time broken link data such that you keep your website free of 404 reports.

3. Screaming Frog SEO Spider for Windows and Mac

Screaming Frog is in many ways comparable to Xenu Lin sleuth. It’ comes as a standalone application for windows, Ubuntu or Mac. You only need to type your URL and it will scan the entire site while optimizing it simultaneously. If you opt for the free version, you will get a limited number of crawled pages. The premium version doesn’t limit crawling, and it offers a range of configurations while offering you customer support.

4. Google Webmaster Tools

Checking your website for dead links using Google Webmaster Tools lets you understand how search engines such as Google perceive your site. If Google finds broken links on your site, it will notify you of such through the Webmaster Tools console. Their recent upgrade makes the webmaster tools easy to use and the reports are easy to read.

5. Dead Link Checker

Dead Link Checker is a highly preferred dead link checker that will notify you of broken links on your site. The tool crawls all the webpages on your site and directs you towards the dead links for you to repair them. You can simply do your search on the Dead Link Checker portal all you need to do is to type in the URL. You have the option to crawl the entire site, or you can choose a single page. This tool has its advantages since it separates the healthy links from the broken ones in its results. You can use it to validate both external and internal links whilst indicating the bad links in the html. You can use the free version and enjoy searching up to 3000 links.

With the presence of broken link checker tools, you shouldn’t have reason why you carry out such a task manually. Other than the involving manual audit, you are likely to miss out on the hidden deadlines. The tools make your work easy and you are sure that you will have an accurate result.

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With the proliferation of World Wide Web’s records and URLs, the ongoing checking and validation of URLs of the websites is an essential and potentially time-consuming task. However, assistance is at hand.
There are a number of models that can be used to regularly check the validity of URLs of websites. One method would be to work from a list of websites and check each one individually. This may be suitable if you are managing a single website but what if you had 200, 500, 1000 or more websites as is the case with many large enterprise and Fortune 500 businesses? The enormity of the task begins to sink in, particularly as it should be done on a regular basis like other ‘housekeeping’ tasks such as authority control.
Over the years, software developers and programmers have developed URL checking software to automate this task as much as possible. This enables time saved to be spent investigating and repairing broken links. One such package covered in more detail below is Xenu’s Link Sleuth™ and is available free of charge from their website.

What does Xenu do?

Xenu’s Link Sleuth™ is a spidering software that checks websites for broken links including standard URLs, images, frames, plug-ins, local image maps, scripts and Java applets. The list of URLs is continually updated and a number of different criteria can be set if required. The software supports SSL websites (i.e. those commencing with https://) and reports on redirected URLs.

Xenu System requirements

Xenu Link For Mac Shortcut

In order to run Xenu’s Link Sleuth™ you will need Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista or 7. Unfortunately, it will not operate in a Windows 3.1 or Macintosh system and is not supported with a mobile app at the moment. However, I have been told that it runs flawlessly under Fedora 13, Red Hat 8, Ubuntu and OS X via wine or WineBottler, and under Crossover on a Mac

Xenu Link For Mac Mojave

Getting into a routine

At Fuze, we check our clients links on a monthly basis as part of our ongoing technical strategy. We include everything from standard URLs to PDFs and images as it is imperative that these are all rendering correctly. By leveraging Xenu’s Link Sleuth™ we are able to identify and correct any broken links. We consistently find the software extremely functional to use.

Further information

You can download the current version of the software 1.1f from the home page of Xenu’s Link Sleuth™ at http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html.