How to Find and Fix Broken Links: 404s, Redirects, and Temporary Errors

Fix a broken link by deciding what the destination should do. A moved guide, a retired service, and a temporary server failure call for different responses. The objective is to restore a useful journey, rather than make an error counter reach zero.

What counts as a broken internal, outbound, or inbound link?

An internal link connects pages on your site. An outbound external link takes a reader to another site. An inbound link, or backlink, brings someone from another site to yours. You can normally edit your own outgoing links; you cannot assume that you control someone else’s source page. A redirect on your site may help visitors who still follow an old inbound URL.

A failed journey can result from a typo, removal, relocation, permissions, or an outage. Check the response as well as the message on screen. A page that says “not found” while returning 200 is different from a real 404. Ordinary missing pages are not a blanket penalty against the entire site, but an unavailable URL can itself disappear from search.

Distinguish 404s, 410s, access errors, and temporary failures

A 404 means that the resource was not found; 410 communicates that it is gone. Either can be appropriate for a genuinely removed page. A 403 access error and a 5xx server failure need a different investigation. Google explains these distinctions in its HTTP status documentation.

Find failures with a crawler and the right Search Console report

Manually test important journeys on a small site. For broader coverage, use an authorized crawler to collect source pages, actual destinations, responses, and final URLs. A crawler can encounter rate limits or access restrictions, so confirm ambiguous findings before declaring a page deleted.

The Page indexing report describes URLs Google knows about on your property. The Links report is not a complete live inventory of every internal and external link. Neither substitutes for checking outgoing references to other websites. Combine search evidence with your own crawl and browser checks.

Prioritize by user journey and the intended page status

Start with failures that prevent an application, purchase, contact request, or essential explanation. Then inspect frequently used routes and pages linked from navigation or several guides. Check the context of an inbound link before choosing a destination; a large backlink count does not make an unrelated redirect useful.

• Can readers finish the important task?
• Does an equivalent replacement actually exist?
• Can a missing citation be replaced by its publisher’s updated material?
• Should a discontinued offer be clearly described as unavailable?

Keep legitimate removals separate from accidental failures. Sending every missing URL to the homepage can conceal the original problem and send visitors somewhere that does not answer their question.

Choose a corrected URL, a permanent redirect, or removal

Follow Google’s redirect guidance when mapping permanent moves. A redirect communicates relocation; it does not guarantee the recovery of a particular ranking or amount of traffic.

Worked examples: a moved guide and a retired service

In a fictional example, /guide-old/ and /guide-new/ explain the same setup procedure. Redirect the old path to the new one in a single hop, update navigation and related links, and verify the final page’s response and content. Readers should reach the expected instructions without an unnecessary intermediate stop.

In another fictional example, /service-retired/ represents a discontinued service with no equivalent replacement. Consider a proper 404 or 410 instead of forwarding visitors to an unrelated product. A helpful error page can offer navigation or search. If a closure notice remains useful, decide separately whether it deserves its own accessible information page.

Verify the repair and maintain a link register

After repair, follow the original link and inspect every hop, the final response, the content, and the intended action. Test as the relevant audience, not only as a signed-in administrator. Google’s crawlable-link guidance also helps distinguish visible anchor text from the actual href.

Record the publisher and checking date for external references. Set review frequency around publishing volume and critical journeys, and include source-link updates whenever a page moves or is retired.

Continue with the guide that matches your next task: 301 vs 302 vs 307 vs 308: Choose and Verify SEO Redirects; How to Diagnose a Search Ranking Drop: Data, Indexing, and Site Changes; Canonical Tags: Setup, Verification, and How They Differ from noindex and Redirects.