Most web users and programmers must have stumbled across the problem of broken links or a deleted page, a forgotten sub-directory or a site moved to a different domain. Ultimately the web pages will lead to a “404 Not Found” error page and for big pages the user will find it difficult to individually check the links.

Here we have six popular free broken link checking tools for websites which will help in finding broken or dead links. These online and desktop tools make the whole process very simple. Users can easily correct these types of errors.

1. Xenu’s Link Sleuth(TM)

This web tool checks websites for the broken links. Xenu’s Link Sleuth(TM) also performs links verification on the so called normal links, these includes images, frames, plug-ins, image maps, style sheets, backgrounds and java applets. It accurately checks the web pages of user for broken links and has incorporated many advanced features. Link verification can also be performed.

Some additional features include support for SSL websites, partial testing of ftp and gopher sites, re-checking broken links for temporary network errors and no-frills user-interface. The executable file is smaller than 1MB. This offline windows based software also detects and reports redirected URLs. Users can also sort continuously updated displayed list of URLs by different criterions.

2. Link Checker Pro

This is one of the best solutions available for broken link checking for websites. Link Checker Pro performs website analysis, detection of broken links and checks other possible problems with links. Link Checker web tool is available in three diverse interfaces i.e. a command line interface, a GUI client interface and a CGI web interface requiring HTTP server.

Advanced features like antivirus check, HTML and CSS syntax check, recursive and multithreaded check have also been enabled. Link Checker Pro also incorporates cookie support, proxy support, Telnet and local file links support. Link Checker Pro is robust enough to deal with corporate websites containing thousands of links. Sitemap graph comes in different formats. Output can be obtained in either colored, normal or HTML, SQL, CSV, XML texts.

3. Web Link Validator

Web Link Validator is a desktop tool. Users especially web programmers will find it to be very helpful as it detects missing images and links that do not work. Web Link Validator tool checks the integrity of the site, syntax validation and automatic reporting. This runs on systems with Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista.

User can edit, link and unlink each web link directly via the plugin’s page without having to manually edit each post and also detect redirected links. This tool monitors links in users posts, pages and checks modified posts as soon as possible. These link checking intervals can be configured by the programmer. Thus Web Link Validator allows user to view broken links and redirects complete list of links in the site to the Tools Broken Links tab.

4. W3C Link Checker

W3C Link Checker is a web tool that is used for broken link checking in the websites. This tool checks for troubles in links and in referenced objects in a Web page. All that the user needs to do is to provide the URL of their website and this web tool will identify the issues with the web pages and produce a summary in the end.

W3C Link Checker has been launched by W3C.It also recursively checks the whole of any given web site. User can even provide link depth to check these links recursively. W3C Link Checker is actually part of W3C’s validators and Quality Web tools.

5. Broken Link Checker

Broken Link Checker is a WordPress Plug-in. This plug-in tool monitors the blogs and allows user to identify the presence of broken links in them. This Link Checker plug-in needs to be installed in the system. Broken Link Checker plug-in firstly parses the whole website. The time for this process depends on the number of links available in the site and also on the size of the website.

It then checks the posts, bookmarks, blog rolls and links. This process takes about few minutes to hours depending on the size of the web site being parsed. User can monitor the progress of the process and adjust link checking options in Settings of Link Checker.

6. Dead-Links.com

Another popular broken link checking tool for the website is the Dead-Links.com. The user should put the URL of the website or weblog in the input box. The tool will read the HTML code and check for the presence of broken links if any. It is similar to W3C in its processing method.

Dead-Links.com crawls the user website by using the website URL. But teh user cannot enter the depth of the link and the tool has to crawl back and check each page individually. After crawling it provides reports with complete and broken links found on each page of the site.