Xenu Link Sleuth it is one of the most useful (and at the same time free) tools in search engine optimization... Although this program was originally intended to search for broken links on the site, it can be used to solve a number of other tasks by auditing the internal structure of the site and finding weak points in it:

- Search for broken (broken) links on a given resource.
You have written hundreds of articles, many contained links to other resources or some documents, images, but it is impossible to keep track of the performance of all these links manually. V this case it is very convenient to use Xenu Link Sleuth as free software, easy to set up and use.

- Create a sitemap.
For dynamic sites, creating a map is not a problem, however, for static HTML resources, creating a sitemap manually is very time-consuming and laborious. Xenu solves this problem in a few minutes, depending on the size of the site and the speed of the Internet connection.

- Search for pages with long return times.
Knowing which pages on your site are served with a long delay, you can analyze the reason for this behavior and optimize the response time, which will have a positive effect on both visitors and search engines.

- Find non-unique titles.
Each title on the page must be unique, then none of them will be found in additional search results and filtered as duplicate content. Therefore, it is important to know on which pages of the site the titles are repeated.

- Find pages with a high level of nesting.
All pages on the site, if possible, should be no further than two or three clicks from the main page. The further the page is, the more difficult it is to get to it for both users and search engines... If you find similar pages that are important, but located more than 3 clicks from the main page, you should take some measures to improve navigation. You may no longer need some of the farther pages, xenu makes it easy to find them.

- Search pages with maximum number outbound links.
As mentioned earlier, all outbound links on the site should be carefully moderated, since they are trusted by search engines (according to the principle: “Tell me who your friend is and I will tell you who you are!”), As well as assigning various kinds of filters to the site. If you notice a sharp drop in search engine rankings, then the first step is to check all outgoing links, since it is possible, if you are not to blame, then the hackers who posted their spam links on your resource.

- See which of the pages have the highest and lowest number of internal links to themselves.
Check your internal linking numerically. Which pages deserve more attention and which less (based on internal links)?

- Find pictures with missing alt attribute.
The alt attribute is important when optimizing a site or individual pages for specific requests. Check if you missed a description for images that are important on your site, adding which you will improve your position in the search, or you will be found by image search.

The results of solving these problems, as you can see, can be used for optimization, therefore, we will make a small review of the program. Xenu Link Sleuth so that its users are not intimidated by the English interface.

Xenu is a free product and this program can be downloaded from this link. When you start, a very simple window will open in front of you, the important part of which is shown in the screenshot.

To start an audit of a site, select the "File" Check URL "menu item. In the window that appears, enter the website address and select the “Check external links” checkbox (check external links).

The program provides many settings available in the “Options” Preferences ”menu item.

Parallel threads sets the number of synchronous (parallel) requests.
Apply to all jobs allows you to save settings for all projects.

Further, the report allows you to include:
Broken links, ordered by link - Broken links sorted by address;
Broken links, ordered by page - List of broken links sorted by page;
Broken local links - Broken internal links;
Redirected URLs - URLs with 301/302 redirects;
Ftp and gopher URL s - FTP and other non-HTTP addresses;
Valid text URL s - List of working text links;
Site Map - Site map;
Statistics - Statistics;

The Xenu log file is very large and contains all the necessary information. For example, the monitoring statistics of this blog showed the following results:

As a result of the audit, a number of points were found on the site that are worth paying attention to for optimization. The only drawback of the program is the display of Russian page titles in the wrong encoding.

Immediately after completing the check of the site links, a detailed table will appear in the main window, where the data can be sorted by each of the columns: link address, returned status, mime-type, size, title, nesting level, number of external and internal links, time page return. This is the table you should use.

XENU Link Sleuth 1.3.8 - download a free program for detecting broken links on the site. The program is intended primarily for web developers who create and test sites, as well as for SEO specialists.

When developing sites, and then when promoting them, you need to test them for the presence of so-called "broken" links that may appear on the site over time. First of all, the presence of broken links badly affects the impression of the site for the user, and secondly, sites with broken links are ranked worse, that is, they are located lower in the search list than sites in which there are none. Therefore, to analyze the entire site requires a special software, since it is not possible to do such work manually. XENU Link Sleuth is designed for this.

Description of the XENU Link Sleuth program

This software has a common interface that allows you to simply and reliably "communicate" with the program. It is not intended to provide any kind of visual satisfaction from use, but it does its job completely.

In order for you to check the "broken links" on the site, you need to go to the "Check URL" item in the top menu of the XENU Link Sleuth program. Then, a modal window will open, in which you need to enter the appropriate link to the site in the "URL" field. You need to enter the link carefully, without an access protocol, that is, without "http: //", but only the site address. Here, you are given the opportunity to check not only internal, but also external links. To do this, check the box (tick) in the corresponding field.

Also, in this window there is a button with additional options... It allows you to customize the site crawl process. For example, you can set the number of concurrent threads to check for links. This allows you to increase the performance and speed of the program. Also, you can specify the depth of the link checking levels, and so on.

After all the settings, click "OK" and wait for the end of the scan. As a result, you get a list of all site links, where working links are marked in green and not in red. After that, you need to review and solve the problem either manually or with the help of your webmaster.

Today I want to consider the issue of the technical component of our sites, and I invite everyone to look under the "hood" of their site or blog. Is your site really all right as it seems at first glance? Let's talk about the Xenu program, which will help you find broken, outgoing and other unusable links on your resource.

Xenu program - we conduct a technical audit on the site

Hello, I completely disappeared and stopped doing my blog. More and more I go to work with commercial sites. I'll take a little break and share useful program Xenu for Webmasters, which has helped me out more than once. I have been working with her for quite a long time and I constantly apply it in practice.

Using Xenu program you can find all outgoing and broken links on your site.

I will briefly tell you an interesting case that happened a few months ago. One of the sites I'm working on, in particular an online store, was hacked. My colleague, thank her very much, noticed suspicious links to other sites in several product cards. These links cannot be present on our resource in any way, since we use it for clients. We immediately launched Xenu, there are quite a few pages on this site, so the check takes about 1-2 hours.

At the end of the check, we found about 20 outbound links, including those to 18+ sites and online casinos. We also managed to find the attacker, since he left an outgoing link to himself. Yes, there is such an exchange on the Internet that sells links from hacked sites, perhaps some have heard of it.

As a result, we cleaned everything up, found a couple of interesting scripts and changed the passwords. The consequences were not very noticeable, but they lost a little traffic in Google, as they reacted after about a week ... Let's move on to practice.

Checking outbound and external links

Based on the story I told you, if you suspect that something is wrong with your resource (for example, loss of positions or traffic), I advise you to periodically run your site or blog using this program. You can even do it now, for prevention purposes, with me.

The first thing we'll look at is how to detect external links. Xenu you can download a program for checking external links from the link.

1. Launch the program, enter the address of our site and click OK.

We are waiting for the robot to run through all our pages. Depending on how many pages you have, scanning takes anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.

2. As soon as the robot has visited all the pages, we see a list of various links that are present on our resource. In order to make it easier to see and find outgoing links from your site, we sort the links by the "Address" field. We look at the beginning of the list and the end, and here are our external links.

3. In order to quickly find the pages from which the external link is placed, when you click, right click click on the "bad" link and select "URL properties".

We are looking for broken links on a site with Xenu

Now let's check if there are broken links on the site that give 404 codes and how to find them. The main reason for the appearance of such links is that the address (URL) of the page to which the link leads has changed or the page has been deleted, but the link remains. There are also other reasons.

With this sorting, you can also find links that are being redirected, which is also very useful.

I have told you two main points for finding external and broken links on a site using Xenu. The program is free and, as far as I know, is already quite old and not updated, but for us the main thing is what works.

I also use this program, at the "first acquaintance" with the site, which I am starting to work on.

That's all if you have another interesting software on this topic, share in the comments!

Hello dear readers of the blog site. Many people think that broken links are not the most burning topic for a webmaster, because there is always something more important and meaningful than it would be preferable for you to do.

Yes, and it is tedious to look for a program, extension or online service where the check is carried out, and then it takes a long and dreary time to find access and edit the found non-working hyperlinks on your resource.

In principle, it is much easier to forget about this problem, because it is unlikely that they are present in your project in huge quantities and their influence is unlikely to somehow will affect the attitude of visitors and search engines... Or will it affect? To be or not to be a broken link on your site?

I believe that this is an evil, from which you need to periodically get rid of (cleansed). But in any way you decide, I will only describe the methods that I have used and are using to simplify this process.

The problem of broken links and the reason for their appearance

In general, the question of the attitude towards broken links is quite interesting, because there is no unambiguous information on this matter. But judging by the fact that in the panels for Yandex and Google webmasters there is a section where all found broken links on your site will be listed, then this can already be considered the first sign that search engines are not at all interested in them.

I think that with a large number of them, search engines can consider your site abandoned and downgrade it in the SERP. Whether this is actually so, I do not know, but even the fact that broken links present a significant inconvenience to visitors (thereby worsening the PF) can serve as a sufficiently weighty argument to seriously think about identifying and fixing them.

Of course, doing it manually (going through all the internal and external links leading from the pages of your site) is not possible even on very small projects, let alone large portals. Verification is a prerogative software tools- search engine bots, online services or specially written programs, scripts or extensions (plugins) for the site engine you are using.

But still, even after all non-working hyperlinks are found, decision to correct or remove them you will have to accept, and for each of them separately. Therefore, if you decide on this check, just in case, be patient and have some time.

If speak about the reason for the appearance of broken links on the site, then in the case of a blog, the site is mainly my own mistakes in the implementation of manual internal linking, as well as external links to the resources of the authors of the comments and the online services mentioned in the articles, which have managed to sink into oblivion during this time (guys, if you knew how many sites have disappeared in the seven years that my blog has existed - it really becomes sad!).

There are also other variants of their appearance. In general, the reason for non-working links can be changes in urls to third-party resources without using a 301 redirect to glue the new address with the old one (when changing the structure of the site, transferring articles between sections, etc.), and many other purely individual problems.

As I mentioned just above, there are several ways that you can check your project for such flaws. The most obvious thing to me seems to be to use the list of broken links that the search engine bots have collected.

We are looking for broken links in Yandex Webmaster and Google Search Console

In the panels of Yandex and Google webmasters, you can find out on which pages and which non-working hyperlinks were found, and then, if possible, make the necessary corrections in the admin panel of your project.

About working with panels for webmasters I have already written Yandex and Google in some detail, so I will only allow myself to provide links to these materials:

1. (it will have to be updated in the near future, because Yandex has finally finished the new version)

Let's get started with Google's Webmaster Tools. We will assume that using the above materials, you have already added your resource to the Google panel, and now you just have to go from the left menu to the "Scan" - Scan Errors:

On the page that opens, go to the tab "Not found", where all non-working, according to Google, links on your project will be concentrated. But here it should be understood that the search engine considers not only the links leading from your site, but also all those that were posted from other resources (the so-called).

That. the list of not found documents will contain urls obtained not only as a result of your own errors during internal linking, but also the results of errors of those users who in a hurry put a link to you from their site or someone else's forum, but did not check its performance.

Opposite each document not found, you will see an error code 404 (read about what can also be a way out of this situation). You can view the URL of a page that Google could not find on your resource by clicking on any line.

In the same place on the tab Referring Domains you can find the pages from which this broken link was placed.

If in the window that opens you see the URLs of web pages not on your site, then most likely you will not be able to fix anything (although, you can try, for example, in .htaccess to configure a 301 redirect to the correct URL for such broken links). But if non-working hyperlinks were placed from the pages of your own resource, then you will need to find the required article (or a comment to it) in the admin panel and correct or remove the incorrect link.

I think you can figure it out, but along with the Google toolbar, do not apply to see information about not found documents in the panel for webmasters from Yandex, because their data may differ.

In Yandex Webmaster you will need to go to "Indexing" in the left menu - « Internal links» , and in the window that opens, from the drop-down list, you can select a filter by the type of errors (server errors, or the absence of a page or a ban on its indexing):

You will see a list of all found pages, including those with a 404 error. Next, go to the admin panel of your resource, find a non-working hyperlink and either fix it or delete it so as not to confuse the debugged mechanism.

Checking broken links in the Xenu Link Sleuth program

I could also mention in this article about a number of services that allow you to check broken links online, but, unfortunately, I never found a decent one. free solution(although I will consider one option a little below, because it allows you to quickly go over the most "protruding" broken links), but somehow I didn’t get up to try the paid ones. On the free ones, you can check a very limited number of pages, and therefore, the relevance of this method is very doubtful.

But you can use not only online services, but also programs that will be installed on your computer. One of the most popular and, which is very important, free software to check for broken links is Xenu Link Sleuth, which I want to tell you about.

download Xenu Link Sleuth and install on your computer.

After its launch, select from the menu "File" - "Check URL" and in the window that opens, enter the URL of your resource, check the box "Check external links" other resources) and click OK.

As a result, the Xenu Link Sleuth program will begin to search and analyze all internal and external (posted from your resource, for example, to the sites of comment authors) links. All found broken hyperlinks in the resulting report will be marked accordingly (not found, could not be contacted, etc.).

The report itself is of invaluable interest not only from the point of view of 404 errors, but we are primarily interested in this. In the Xenu Link Sleuth window, it is possible to sort the entire list by the row of tabs that are at the very top.

To check the broken links, you will need to use the "Status" tab, as a result of which all lines marked in red will be collected in one place in the list.

In order to find out which page of your site contains a broken hyperlink, you need to right-click on it and select from context menu option "URL Properties":

At the very bottom of the window that opens, you will see a list of the addresses of the pages of your site on which this broken link was found. You just have to go to the admin panel of your resource and make the necessary edits. Yes, it's dreary. Yes, it is inconvenient, because you have to copy and paste links and search for the necessary pages in the admin panel. But after spending time and effort you will 100% save your site from broken links(in any case, taking place at the moment).

But, as I mentioned just above, the Xenu Link Sleuth program, with the right approach and ingenuity, can provide a lot more information. If you experiment with other tabs in the program, you can get the following information about your site from this report:

1. if you try to sort the data in the program window by the "Title" tab, then in this way you can find pages of your site that have duplicated Title titles or do not have them at all
2. using the “Size” tabulator, you can find pages that are too heavy in your project, which will take a long time to load
3. using the tabulator "In Links", you can find out the number of incoming links to any document of your resource, and from the context menu (right-click and select the lowest item in the menu that opens) you can also find out the addresses of pages linking to this document
4. by sorting by the tabulator "Out Links" in the report window of the Xenu Link Sleuth program, you can find out the number of outgoing links from a particular page of your resource, and from the context menu you can see which pages are linked to
5. sorting by the tab "Type", you can find images that do not have an Alt tag
6. tabulator "Level" will allow you to view the nesting of certain pages of your site

All in all, Xenu Link Sleuth is invaluable. In addition, for a static site, this program can, which can then be slipped to search engines to speed up indexing.

Also, Xenu Link Sleuth, based on the results of the check, can generate a very convenient report in Html form pages where you can view in a digestible form all the web pages of your project that have broken links and see the above map.

To create a report, you need to select the "File" items in the program menu - "Report" or just press R on your keyboard. A menu with sections will be located at the top of the report page.

Finding Links in WordPress with Broken Link Checker

If you have, then you may find it more convenient to use the Broken Link Checker plugin to check for broken hyperlinks. It can re-check after a specified period of time, stop its work at times when your hosting server is heavily loaded, and, most importantly, allows you to fix or remove broken links right from its window, without having to enter the article editing window.

So first you will need to download Broken Link Checker and in a standard way. If you have any problems with this, you can refer to the material on the link.

Immediately after installation, it will start working and scan your blog for broken links. By going to the settings page of this plugin ("Settings" - "Link Checker") in the WordPress admin panel, you can see how many hyperlinks Broken Link Checker has already found on your blog, as well as make the necessary settings.

Here you can set the frequency re-scan, ask the plugin to send you an e-mail message when it detects an inaccessible page, and also ask the plugin to highlight the found hyperlinks using a special CSS style.

But Broken Link Checker has a few more settings tabs. On the "Look For Links In" tab, you can specify in which materials on your blog it will search, and on the "Which Links To Check" tab, specify the links from which objects will be checked. On the "Advanced" tab you can maximize minimize the load of this plugin on the hosting server by limiting the search time and setting the server load threshold, upon exceeding which it will interrupt its work.

As the check progresses, a report on the work done and found broken links will be provided, which you can see by going to the WordPress admin menu in the "Tools" - "Incorrect links":

Here you will have rich opportunities for working with them, and everything that you may need (edit, delete it, go to the material in which this broken link is placed) can be done right from here, without going anywhere and looking for anything. This is, in my opinion, the main advantage of the Broken Link Checker plugin. In addition, at the end of the test, it can be taken down with peace of mind until the next test, so that the eyes do not become callous. I think that similar extensions should also exist for Joomla, but, unfortunately, I am not familiar with them yet.

Broken Link Checker online service

Well, and finally, as promised, I will describe one of the many online services designed to find broken links on any website. Not to say that this service stood out in any way or worked well in a special way. No. But finding broken links in it is quite simple and he finds, as a rule, not a lot of them, so, probably, not to upset us too much. I usually use it first (I check it several times in a row), and only then I use the plugin and the program (for varnishing, so to speak).

So go on Broken Link Checker, enter the URL of your site into the form located in the upper right corner of the page that opens and click on the "Find broken links" button. A page will open where you will need to solve the captcha and choose one of two verification methods (the detailed difference is not clear, but it makes sense to check both options in turn). Once again, press the coveted button and observe the result of the check, or go about your business without closing this tab in the browser.

The Broken Link Checker service will inform you about the number of checked pages and will slowly start displaying a list of found broken links. You can start correcting them right now without waiting for the end of the verification process. To do this, it will be enough to click on the "src" button in the required line of the list:

As a result, you will see source page (you can get to it by clicking on the next button "url"), where the broken link was found. Moreover, the placement in the code will be highlighted:

Everything. It remains only to find the problematic link in the text of the article or in the body of the comment, check its inoperability once again and fix the Broken Link as if it did not exist. Truncated.

Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site

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Xenu is a program for analyzing website performance. Helps to detect "broken links", indicates their location, provides a number of recommendations to improve the quality of the site. Used by professional analysts, SEO-optimizers to achieve a higher position in search results. Works with both text and graphics, background images, tables, and other components.

The product possesses simple interface facilitating orientation in the program. The user enters the required address, after which the application displays a list of links indicating their status. Allows you to compose data into reports, create graphs for more visual demonstration of results. It is possible to export them to Excel, open them in a browser. Helps to run an automatic check after a certain period.

Download for free the full Russian version of Xenu from the official website without registration and SMS.

System requirements

• Supported OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8.1, 10, 8
• Bit depth: 32 bit, x86, 64 bit