Broken Link CheckerTwo tools help you find each broken link on the page and work through your list. By the end of this page you will use both, and you will read the badge and notifications too.
Plan: highlight, the side panel, the badge and notifications work on every plan, guests included.
Highlight a link on the page
Highlight shows you where one link sits on the page you scanned.
- Find the link in the results in the popup or the side panel.
- Click HIGHLIGHT on its row, or select the row and press H.
The page scrolls to the link and outlines it in red for four seconds. If the link appears more than once, every copy gets the outline. The row then says where the link sits, for example "in footer, 2 places".
Highlight works on one link at a time, and no button outlines every broken link at once. It runs only in the tab you started the scan from.
When highlight cannot find the link
- "switch to the scanned tab" means the tab you scanned is closed or now shows another site. Go back to that tab, or scan the page again.
- "not on this page" means the link sits on another page of a site scan, or inside an embedded frame. It also shows when the page changed since the scan.
The side panel
The side panel shows the same results as the popup and stays open while you switch tabs. It keeps updating during a scan, so you can watch results arrive. You can open the side panel in any of these three ways:
- Click Open full results in the side panel under the results in the popup.
- Open the three-dot menu in the popup and click Open side panel.
- Press Ctrl+Shift+K, or Cmd+Shift+K on a Mac.
Chrome opens the side panel only after a click or a key press from you. Before your first scan, the panel reads "No scan yet. Start one from the popup." The panel has no scan button, so new scans always start from the popup.
Group and sort
The Group menu at the top of the panel sorts rows into sections:
- status groups rows under BROKEN, REDIRECT, BLOCKED and 200 OK.
- source position groups rows by the page each link was found on.
- internal / external splits links to your own site from links to other sites.
Click CODE to sort by status code, or MS to sort by response time in milliseconds. Click the same heading again to reverse the order of the rows.
Row actions
Each row shows the badge, the address, the anchor text and the response time.
- HIGHLIGHT, OPEN ↗ and COPY work the same way as in the popup.
- IGNORE hides the row and skips the link in your future scans.
Press the arrow keys to move through the rows of the panel. Then press H, C, O or I to highlight, copy, open or ignore the selected link.
Ignore a link
Click IGNORE to move a row into the ignored fold of the panel. Click Show on that fold to see the ignored rows again.
IGNORE also adds the path of the link to Exclude patterns in Options, so future scans skip it. That pattern applies to every future scan, on every site. A pattern matches any address that contains it, so a short path can skip more links than you expect.
Click RESTORE on an ignored row to undo both changes. Extension options and shortcuts shows how to edit your patterns by hand.
Export from the panel
Click Export CSV to save the rows you can see in the panel, without the ignored ones.
The toolbar badge
The badge on the extension icon shows the state of the scan in the tab you scanned.
| Badge | What it means |
|---|---|
| ••• in blue | A scan is running. |
| A number in red | The scan found that many broken links. Above 99, it reads 99+. |
| ✓ in green | Nothing is broken or blocked. The check mark clears after about thirty seconds. |
| 0 in red | Nothing is broken, but some sites blocked the check. |
| No badge | No scan has run in this tab, or your session expired. |
The number stays until the tab reloads or moves to another page.
Notifications
Chrome can tell you when a scan finishes, even when the popup is closed.
- Open Options and find the Notifications card.
- Switch on Notify on new broken links.
- Click Allow when Chrome asks for permission to show notifications.
Each finished scan then sends one Chrome notification titled "Scan finished". It fires for clean scans too, with "No broken links" and the name of the site. If you decline the prompt, the switch turns itself off again.
The permission belongs to each computer, so switch it on again on your other machines.
Open the side panel on results
The Open side panel on results option in Options changes what the icon does after a scan. With it on, a finished scan makes the next icon click open the side panel, not the popup.
The popup comes back when you sign in or sign out from the Options page. Turning the option off does not bring the popup back on its own. Extension troubleshooting has the steps to get the popup back.