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Troubleshooting

A link shows as blocked

Why links to LinkedIn, Facebook and other sites show as blocked, why that never lowers your score, and how to check them or keep them out of scans.

2 min read

A blocked link is one the scanner could not check, because the other site turned it away. By the end of this page you will know how to confirm the link works and how to silence it.

Some sites refuse automated checkers but serve people normally. LinkedIn and Facebook are the best-known examples. They answer the scanner with a refusal, or they drop the connection.

A 403 or 429 answer from any site lands in blocked too. Firewalls often send a 403 to bots, and a 429 means the site slowed the scanner down. So neither answer proves the link is broken.

A blocked link never counts as broken and never lowers your health score. A real 404 from those same sites still counts as broken.

  • Scan reports and public report pages list them in a separate Blocked links note below the table.
  • The Broken links page of a project and its CSV export leave them out.

Links that timed out or got no answer show on the Broken links page under Needs check. They do not lower your score either.

  1. Open the link in your browser.
  2. If the page loads, the link works. You do not need to do anything.
  3. If you see an error page, fix or remove the link on your site.

For a row on the Broken links page:

  1. Click Exclude on the row.
  2. A message confirms that the pattern is excluded from future scans.

Exclude on a link to another site skips that whole domain. On a link to your own site, it skips that exact path.

For any other link, add a pattern by hand:

  1. Open the project and click Scan settings.
  2. Add a part of the address to Excluded URL patterns, one per line. A domain such as linkedin.com works.
  3. Click Save exclusions.

Exclusions apply from the next scan. The current results stay as they are.

When your own site shows as blocked

Your firewall or CDN may turn away the scanner. Then links to your own pages land in blocked. If your start page refuses the scanner, the scan stops with a message instead.

Allow the BrokenLinkCheckerBot user agent in your firewall or CDN settings. The crawler page shows the exact user agent string. Then run the scan again.

How links are classified Which answers make a link broken, a warning or blocked, how redirects and soft 404 pages count, and why a 403 or 429 never counts as broken. Scan settings Set up a project's scans. Exclude URL patterns, decide how URL parameters count, check images and documents, and turn on the weekly scan. The broken links table Filter a project's broken links, read each column, exclude false alarms and export the list as a CSV file for your team or your developer.