How to Find and Fix Broken Links and 404 Errors

When you open Search Console and see hundreds of 404 errors, the first reaction is usually panic. No need. A 404 is a normal server response saying a page wasn't found, and most sites always have some. The real job is to separate the ones that actually cost you visitors or money.

What is a 404, and is it always bad?

When a visitor or Google requests an address that doesn't exist, the server returns a 404 code. The cause might be a deleted product, a blog post whose address changed, or a mistyped link on another site.

According to Google's own statements, 404s on their own don't lower your rankings. A page that truly doesn't exist should return 404. Problems start in two cases. First, when links from your own pages are broken; the visitor clicks, lands on an empty page and leaves. Second, when a page that used to get traffic or earned links from other sites now returns 404; the value it built up is wasted.

Finding broken links

The easiest place to start is Search Console. In the Pages report, the Not found (404) row lists addresses Google crawled but couldn't find, often with the page that linked to them. If you haven't set it up, our Search Console article walks you through it.

The second option is a crawler. Free versions of tools such as Screaming Frog crawl a limited number of URLs and show internal broken links along with the page they sit on; check the current limit on the tool's own site. For a small business site, the free version is often enough.

Third, check how often your 404 page is viewed in your analytics tool. If the 404 page has a distinctive title, you can see which addresses visitors landed on it from.

Redirect, fix or leave it

Ask the same questions for every 404: does this address get traffic, does it get links from other sites, is there a page that can replace it?

If an internal link is broken, fix the link itself. A wrong address in the menu, footer or a blog post is best replaced with the correct one.

If an old page was removed and a closely related new page exists, set up a 301 permanent redirect. For example, redirect a discontinued product to a similar product or its category. Avoid redirecting everything to the home page; Google often treats that as a soft 404, and the visitor still doesn't find what they wanted.

If the address gets no traffic, no links and has no equivalent, leave it. A 404 is correct there. Odd addresses from bot crawls or typos belong in this group too.

If you are redesigning your site, this is much easier to do before launch; our article on keeping SEO during a redesign explains how to list old URLs and prepare a redirect map.

A good 404 page

However careful you are, some visitors will hit a 404. The page shouldn't be a dead end. A short, friendly explanation, a search box, links to your three or four most visited pages and contact details are enough. Make sure the page really returns a 404 code from the server; pages that look like error pages but return a 200 code confuse Google.

Five minutes a month looking at the 404 list in Search Console is the whole maintenance routine for this.