Broken external links

What this check looks for

This site-wide check looks at external link edges from the crawl and, where the scan pipeline probed their status, flags any that came back 4xx/5xx or unreachable. If the pipeline didn't probe external links for this scan, or none were found in the crawl, it reports "na". Any probed external link that resolves cleanly passes; broken ones are listed with their status and the page that links to them.

Why it matters

A dead external link is a small thing individually, but a page riddled with them signals it hasn't been reviewed or updated in a long time — visitors clicking through to a "resource" that 404s lose confidence in whatever claim the link was meant to support, even if that claim is accurate. It also matters for citation-style content: if you're linking out to sources to back up a factual claim, a dead source undermines the credibility of the claim itself, which is exactly the kind of signal an AI system weighing your page's trustworthiness would pick up on when deciding whether to treat your content as well-sourced.

How to fix it

Periodically re-check outbound links and update or remove the ones that no longer resolve:

<!-- Cited source that has since moved or been taken down -->
<a href="https://example.com/old-report">industry benchmark report</a>

<!-- Fixed: point at the current URL, or an archived copy if the original is gone -->
<a href="https://example.com/2026-report">industry benchmark report</a>

For content that cites a lot of external sources, build a periodic link-check step into your publishing workflow rather than relying on a one-time audit.