Every link on the page is requested and its status recorded. A 404 or 410 means the destination states the resource does not exist. Only those two statuses count as broken - a 403 or 429 means our checker was refused, which is reported separately and never scored.
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How this rule is weighted
- Importance
- 7 / 10
- How much this matters relative to other rules.
- Confidence
- SPECIFICATION
- A standard says so: HTML, WCAG, an RFC or Google's own documentation.
- Severity
- error
- How the finding is presented when it fails.
- Scoring
- Counts
- A failure costs points in its category.
Impact is importance multiplied by the confidence tier’s weight — SPECIFICATION 1.0, RESEARCH 0.7, EMERGING 0.3, EXPERIMENTAL 0.1. Two rules backed by the same class of evidence therefore always carry the same weight, which is what makes the score reproducible rather than hand-tuned.
What produces this finding
Built at scan time by link resolver, not from our static registry. That engine evaluates its whole rule set in one pass, so this check cannot be run on its own — it runs as part of a scan.
Questions about this rule
- Does SEO_BROKEN_LINKS affect my score?
- Yes. It is an importance 7 rule at SPECIFICATION confidence, so a failure costs 7 × 1 points of impact in the SEO category before that category is normalised to 100.
- What does SPECIFICATION confidence mean?
- A standard says so: HTML, WCAG, an RFC or Google's own documentation. Confidence is a declared tier rather than a per-rule number, so every rule backed by the same class of evidence carries the same weight - which is what makes the score reproducible instead of hand-tuned.
- How do I check SEO_BROKEN_LINKS on my own site?
- This rule is produced by link resolver during a scan. link resolver evaluates its whole rule set in one pass, so this check cannot be run on its own - run the SEO checker and it is included.
Tags
- seo
- links
- broken
Related SEO rules
- Page is not blocked by a robots meta tagA noindex robots meta tag removes the page from search results entirely. When unintentional this single tag outweighs every other SEO signal on the page.SEO_ROBOTS_META_INDEXABLE
- Title tag existsEvery indexable page must have a non-empty <title> element.SEO_TITLE_EXISTS
- X-Robots-Tag header does not block indexingAn X-Robots-Tag: noindex response header removes the page from search results just as effectively as the meta tag, but is invisible in the page source.SEO_XROBOTS_INDEXABLE
- Googlebot-specific noindex absentA googlebot-specific noindex removes the page from Google while leaving other engines unaffected - easy to miss.SEO_NO_INLINE_NOINDEX_COMMENT
- Mobile viewport declaredWithout a viewport meta tag mobile browsers render at desktop width and zoom out, which Google treats as not mobile-friendly.SEO_VIEWPORT_META
- Title length within Google's recommended rangeTitles significantly longer than ~60 characters are commonly truncated in search results.SEO_TITLE_LENGTH