`Broken Link Checker is a Chrome extension that finds dead, redirected, and working links on any webpage in seconds. Click the icon in your toolbar, and the extension scans every URL on the page — anchor tags, navigation menus, meta links, onclick handlers — and highlights each one with a color code. Green means the link works. Red means it's broken. Blue means it redirects. No setup, no account, no external service required.

The problem it solves

Broken links are one of the most common and most ignored issues on the web. A single dead link on a landing page can cost conversions. A handful of 404 errors across a blog can quietly erode search rankings over months. After a site migration, hundreds of links can break overnight — and without a systematic check, most of them go unnoticed until a user or a Google crawler finds them first.

Manual checking is painfully slow. Copy a URL, paste it in a browser, wait, check the status, move on. For a page with 50+ links, that's an hour of mind-numbing work. External crawling tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs Site Audit are powerful but heavyweight — they require configuration, take time to run, and are designed for full-site audits, not quick page-level checks.

Broken Link Checker fills the gap between doing nothing and spinning up an enterprise tool. It's the fastest way to validate every link on a page you're looking at right now.

How it works

Install the extension from Chrome Web Store. Open any webpage. Click the Broken Link Checker icon in the toolbar. The extension immediately starts checking every URL it finds on the page. As results come in, links are highlighted directly on the page with color-coded labels:

— Green: the link returns a 200 OK status. It works. — Red: the link returns a 4xx or 5xx error. It's broken. — Blue: the link returns a 3xx redirect. It works, but points somewhere other than the original URL.

You can filter results by status to focus on what matters — show only broken links, only redirects, or only working ones. When the scan is complete, click Export to download a CSV file with every result. Each row includes the link text, destination URL, HTTP status code, and a human-readable status description.

The entire process takes seconds for most pages. No waiting for a crawl queue. No logging into a dashboard. No pasting URLs into a web form.

What it checks

The extension goes beyond standard anchor tags. It checks:

— Regular links (a href) — Navigation menus and footers — Links inside buttons and clickable elements — Meta tags with URLs (canonical, og:url, etc.) — Onclick handlers that contain URLs — Embedded resource links

This means it catches broken links that simpler tools miss — like a CTA button that points to a dead page, or a canonical tag referencing a URL that no longer exists.

Who it's built for

SEO specialists use it to audit pages before publishing, catch broken internal links during content updates, and validate link-building targets. A quick scan before hitting "publish" prevents embarrassing 404s from going live.

Developers use it during staging reviews to make sure every link on a new feature or redesigned page actually works. It's faster than writing a test script and more thorough than clicking around manually.

QA testers add it to their pre-release checklist. One click per page gives a complete link health report — no need to maintain a separate testing tool for URL validation.

Content editors and writers use it to hunt down outdated references. Blog posts from a year ago might link to resources that have moved or disappeared. A quick scan surfaces these without reading through every paragraph.

Marketing teams use it to make sure every CTA, every landing page link, every email template reference actually leads somewhere. A broken "Sign Up" button is a silent conversion killer.

Agency teams use the CSV export to generate client-ready reports. The export includes all the data a client needs to see — link text, URL, status code, description — formatted and ready to drop into a spreadsheet or audit document.

Privacy and performance

All checks run locally in your browser. The extension sends HTTP requests directly from your machine to check link status — no data is collected, stored, or sent to any third-party server. There is no tracking, no analytics, no ads, and no account required.

The extension is 247KB in size. It has no background processes and zero performance impact when not in use. It only activates when you click the icon.

What makes it different

Most broken link checkers fall into two categories: heavyweight crawling tools that require setup and take minutes to run, or basic web forms where you paste a URL and wait for results on someone else's server.

Broken Link Checker is neither. It works inside the browser, on the page you're already looking at, with results in seconds. The visual highlighting shows broken links in context — you see exactly where on the page the problem is, not just a list of URLs in a report. This makes fixing issues faster because you immediately understand which section, which paragraph, which button has the broken link.

It also checks more than just anchor tags. Tools that only scan href attributes miss broken links hidden in onclick handlers, meta tags, and dynamically generated elements. This extension catches them.

And because everything runs locally, there are no privacy concerns. You can use it on staging environments, internal tools, password-protected pages, and localhost — anywhere your browser can reach.

Track record

2,000+ users on Chrome Web Store. 5.0 rating across 16 reviews. Featured badge from Google, which recognizes extensions that follow Chrome's best practices for quality, security, and user experience.

Users report saving hours on site migration audits, catching issues that other tools missed, and integrating the extension into their daily publishing workflow. The most common feedback: it just works.`