Links to broken external pages

Severity: Warning
Impact: Medium
Effort to fix: Low
Issue code: links_to_broken_external

Why it matters

This page links to external URLs that return errors or cannot be reached, which frustrates visitors.

How to fix it

Update the links to working pages or remove them.

How it affects your score

Finding this issue on any page costs the Internal Linking score 3 points, plus up to 12 more depending on the share of crawled pages affected. Weakens rankings, crawling or measurement. Fix after critical issues.

Find the affected URLs

Open Crawl > Issues and pick Links to broken external pages. Each affected URL is listed with its evidence, and Copy URLs or Export URLs hands the list to a developer. The issue also appears in the Action Plan, ranked by impact (medium) and effort (low), and in the issues CSV under the code links_to_broken_external. After fixing, run a new audit and use Compare to confirm the URLs moved to fixed.

Guides that cover this issue

External link checking