Internal links to error pages
What it is
The page links to one or more pages on your own site that answered with an error the last time Asky fetched them: a 4xx such as 404 Not Found or 410 Gone, or a 5xx server error. The finding lists each link with the status its target returned.
Why it matters
A visitor who clicks the link lands on an error instead of the content they were promised. Google does not use content from URLs that answer 4xx and removes them from its index, so the link leads nowhere in search either and the credit it would pass is lost. An assistant that fetches the page for a user is likely to hit the same error. Broken links usually follow a page that was deleted or renamed while content and menus still name its old address.
How Asky checks it
Asky reads the page’s links from its raw HTML (JavaScript links are not seen) and looks up each target on the page’s exact host among your pages. A link is reported when its target answered with status 400 or higher. Asky does not request link targets itself: only pages from your sitemap, including ones since dropped from it, are judged. Targets that refused Asky’s crawler with 401 or 403, or kept answering 429 or 503, count as blocked, not broken. Image-only links are not checked. It runs in full-site and selected-page audits with Link analysis on that reached every page without blocks or errors; error pages themselves are skipped.
Reported as an error with high severity.
How to fix it
- Open the finding to see each broken link and the status of its target.
- If the page moved, change the link to its new address. Linking to the old address through a redirect is reported as a link to an internal redirect.
- If the page is gone with no replacement, remove the link or point it at the closest relevant page.
- If the target should exist, restore it or fix the server error. A 5xx on a page that normally works may have been temporary: open it and check.
- For the old address itself, add a 301 to its replacement so external links and bookmarks still work, and remove it from your sitemap.
- Fix links in menus, footers and reusable blocks once, in the template, to clear the finding on every page.
Example
https://example.com/blog/pricing-guide links to /pricing-old, which answers 404 since the pricing page moved:
<!-- Before -->
<a href="/pricing-old">See our plans</a>
<!-- After -->
<a href="/pricing">See our plans</a>