External Link Checker
Enter any URL to audit its outbound links. Every link leaving the domain, grouped by destination, with the rel attribute, new-tab safety, scheme and live status of each one.
Short answer
An external link checker lists every link on a page that points to another domain and reports what each one is doing. The three things worth auditing are the destination, the rel attribute, and the state of the link itself. nofollow, sponsored and ugc all withhold the endorsement while declaring different reasons, and a page-level meta robots nofollow overrides every one of them, which is the usual reason an outbound audit comes back wrong. This tool groups destinations by domain so the shape of the profile is visible, flags target="_blank" without rel="noopener", flags http:// destinations, and fetches live status for the first 50 links in document order. Linking out is not a risk to manage: it is normal on any page worth reading, and the pattern that causes problems is undisclosed paid placement rather than volume.
The four things worth auditing on an outbound link
Most outbound link tools report status codes and stop, which answers whether a link works and nothing about what it is doing. These are the properties that change what a link means.
| Property | What it controls | What a problem looks like |
|---|---|---|
| rel attribute | Whether the link passes an endorsement, and what it declares | A paid placement with no sponsored value, or blanket nofollow on every citation |
| Destination domain | The shape of the outbound profile once links are grouped | One domain taking most of the links, usually a template or an affiliate deal |
| target and rel together | Whether an opened page can reach back into your window | target="_blank" with no noopener or noreferrer |
| Scheme | Whether the click costs an extra redirect hop | http:// destinations that now redirect to https |
| Anchor text | What tells a crawler and a screen reader where the link goes | An image link with no alt, or a link wrapping nothing |
| Status code | Whether the destination still exists | 404s and timeouts, which accumulate silently as the web moves |
Anchor text is the row people skip, and image links are where it goes wrong quietly. When a link wraps an image, the alt text is the anchor text a crawler reads, so an image link with no alt gives its destination nothing and gives a screen reader user nothing either. The image alt checker reports those images from the other direction, along with the alt attributes that are present but say only what the file was called.
The check that invalidates all the others
A meta robots tag containing nofollow or none applies to every link on the page, whatever its own rel attribute says. Audit the rel attributes without reading the page-level tag first and you can report a page as fully followed when none of it is. This tool reads the page tag first and folds it into the followed count.
nofollow, sponsored, ugc, and when each one applies
Google introduced sponsored and ugc in September 2019 and, at the same time, changed all three from directives to hints. The distinction between them is a disclosure, and it is read by people as much as by crawlers.
| Value | Declares | Use it on |
|---|---|---|
| rel="sponsored" | The placement was paid for or compensated | Affiliate links, paid reviews, advertising, anything exchanged for value |
| rel="ugc" | A user added this link, not the publisher | Comments, forum posts, profile fields, any user-submitted content |
| rel="nofollow" | The publisher does not vouch for this link | The general case, and a safe fallback when more than one applies |
| No rel attribute | An ordinary editorial link the publisher stands behind | Citations, sources, references, everything you chose to link because it helps the reader |
The blanket nofollow habit
Nofollowing every outbound link was a PageRank sculpting tactic that stopped working in 2009, when Google changed how nofollowed links divide equity. Withholding it no longer redirects it anywhere useful.
What the habit still costs is the ordinary signal that a page cites real sources. Reserve nofollow for links you genuinely do not want to vouch for, and use sponsored where money changed hands.
What outbound links do for a page, and what they do not
The fear that linking out leaks something valuable has outlived the mechanism it was based on. Here is what is actually true of outbound links today.
- Linking to relevant, credible sources is normal on any page worth reading, and Google has repeatedly said outbound links are not something to avoid
- There is no limit on how many a page may have. The old 100-link guidance was a crawler constraint retired more than a decade ago
- Undisclosed paid links passing endorsement are the pattern that draws manual action, not volume
- A dead outbound link is a dead end for the reader before it is anything else, and they accumulate at a rate nobody plans for
- A concentrated outbound profile, where one domain takes most of the links, is what a reviewer looks at first
The practical value of an audit is finding what you did not intend: the template that injects a partner link into every page, the affiliate links that never got sponsored, the citation that started 404ing two years ago.
Which tool for which question
To find broken links of every kind across a page, internal and external together, the broken link checker is the direct route. This page answers the other question: who you link to and on what terms. For the internal side of the same page, the internal link analyzer splits the links a page makes in its own writing from the ones its template adds, and the website URL extractor crawls a whole site and returns the URLs it links to internally.
How to audit the outbound links on a page
Six steps, ordered so the check that can invalidate the rest comes before the ones it would invalidate. The tool runs all six; the sequence matters when you are doing it by hand.
- 01
List every link that leaves the domain
Start from the full set rather than a sample. Deduplicate on the destination URL, because the same outbound link repeated in a body and a sidebar is one endorsement of one page rather than two.
- 02
Group the destinations by domain
The outbound profile is a shape, not a list. One domain taking 40% of your outbound links says something about the page that no individual link does, and it is invisible until the links are grouped.
- 03
Read the rel attribute on each one
nofollow, sponsored and ugc all withhold the endorsement, and they mean different things to a reviewer. A paid placement carrying a bare nofollow instead of sponsored is a disclosure problem before it is an SEO one.
- 04
Check for a page-level nofollow overriding everything
A meta robots nofollow applies to every link on the page regardless of its own rel attribute. Auditing rel attributes alone reports a page as fully followed when in fact none of it is.
- 05
Find the links opening in a new tab without rel=noopener
target=_blank without noopener hands the opened page a handle on your window through window.opener, which it can use to navigate your tab elsewhere. Browsers now imply noopener, but the attribute is what makes it certain on older ones.
- 06
Fetch the status of each destination
Outbound links rot at a rate nobody plans for. A link to a page that now 404s is a dead end for the reader and a small quality signal against the page, and neither shows up until someone checks.
Run it again after any template change. Outbound links are the part of a page most often added by something other than the person who wrote it, which is exactly why they drift.
What this tool checks
Every outbound link
Deduplicated on the destination, so one endorsement counts once
Grouped by domain
The shape of the outbound profile, with follow and nofollow counts per destination
rel attributes
nofollow, sponsored and ugc read on every link and reported separately
Page-level nofollow
The meta robots tag that silently overrides every rel attribute on the page
New-tab safety
target="_blank" without rel="noopener" or rel="noreferrer"
Insecure destinations
http:// links that now cost an extra redirect hop per click
Live status codes
The first 50 links in document order, with HEAD retried as GET on a 405
Bot blocks separated
401, 403, 429 and 999 reported as unverified rather than counted as dead links
Anchor text
Including image alt text, which is what a crawler reads on an image link
Outbound links drift because a template adds them, not a writer
rel="sponsored" after an update. None of those show up in a review of the copy, because none of them are in the copy. Checking a page after every template change is the cheapest way to catch them, and the meta tag checker covers the page-level directives that decide what those links are allowed to do.Frequently asked questions
What is an external link checker?
It is a tool that lists every link on a page pointing to another domain and reports what each one is doing: which destination it goes to, whether the rel attribute passes or withholds the endorsement, whether it opens in a new tab safely, whether it uses https, and whether the destination is still alive. It answers 'who am I linking to, and how' rather than the narrower 'are my links working'.
How is this different from a broken link checker?
A broken link checker asks whether links work, covers internal and external links together, and reports status codes. This tool asks what your outbound linking looks like: destinations grouped by domain, rel attributes read on every link, target and scheme audited, and status fetched as one signal among several. Use the broken link checker to find 404s across a page, and this one to audit who a page endorses and on what terms.
Do external links hurt SEO?
No, and the belief that they do has produced a great deal of pointless nofollowing. Linking out to relevant, credible sources is normal on any page worth reading, and Google has said outbound links are not something to be afraid of. What causes problems is a specific pattern: paid or exchanged links passing endorsement without disclosure, or a page whose outbound links exist to benefit the destination rather than the reader.
What is the difference between nofollow, sponsored and ugc?
All three tell Google not to treat the link as an endorsement, and since 2019 Google treats them as hints rather than directives. They differ in what they declare: sponsored marks a paid or compensated placement, ugc marks a link a user added such as a comment or forum post, and nofollow is the general case for a link you do not want to vouch for. Using sponsored on paid links is the disclosure that matters, and a bare nofollow on a paid link is a weaker signal than the correct one.
How many outbound links should a page have?
There is no limit worth quoting. The old 100-links-per-page guidance was a crawler constraint retired more than a decade ago, not a quality rule. What matters is whether each link serves the reader. A page with forty outbound links that cite sources reads very differently from a page with forty that all point at one domain, which is why this tool groups by destination rather than only counting.
Should I nofollow all my external links?
No. Blanket nofollowing was a response to PageRank sculpting that stopped working in 2009, when Google changed how nofollowed links divide equity so that withholding it no longer redirected it anywhere useful. Nofollowing every outbound link now costs you the ordinary signal that you cite real sources and gains nothing. Reserve it for links you genuinely do not want to vouch for.
What does rel="noopener" do, and why does it matter?
When a link opens in a new tab with target="_blank", the page it opens gets a reference to your window through window.opener and can navigate your tab to another URL. rel="noopener" severs that reference. Current Chrome, Firefox and Safari imply noopener for target="_blank", so the exposure is largely historical, but the attribute is what makes the behaviour certain across older browsers and embedded webviews. It costs nothing to state explicitly.
Why does the tool report links to http:// destinations?
Because almost every site now redirects http to https, so an http link turns each click into an extra hop and, on the way, briefly exposes the request. On a page served over https, an http link in the markup is also the kind of thing that produces mixed-content warnings when the destination is an asset rather than a page. Updating the href is a one-line fix with no downside.
Does a page-level meta robots nofollow override the rel attributes?
Yes, and this is the single most common way an outbound link audit ends up wrong. A meta robots tag containing nofollow or none applies to every link on the page, so a page can be full of links with no rel attribute at all and still pass no endorsement anywhere. This tool reads the page-level tag first and reflects it in the followed count rather than reporting the rel attributes in isolation.
How many links does the tool check the status of?
Every outbound link on the page is listed and audited for rel, target, scheme and anchor text. Live status is fetched for the first 50 in document order, so the links checked are the ones nearest the top of the page rather than an arbitrary sample. Some servers reject HEAD requests with a 405, so those are retried as GET before being reported.
What does it mean if one domain takes most of my outbound links?
It usually means a partnership, an affiliate arrangement, or a template injecting the same link into every page. None of those is a problem in itself, but all three are worth knowing about, because a concentrated outbound profile is what a manual reviewer looks at first and a pattern you did not intend is worth catching before someone else does. The tool flags a domain taking 40% or more of the links.
Why are some links marked bot-blocked rather than broken?
Because a 401, 403, 429, 451 or 999 is the destination refusing our request, not evidence the page is gone. G2, Capterra, LinkedIn and anything behind aggressive bot protection answer an unfamiliar user agent that way while serving the same URL to a browser perfectly well. A checker that called those broken would report a page citing nine review sites as having nine dead links, so they are reported as unverified instead. Open one in a browser if you want to be sure.
Why does a link to my own subdomain show up as external?
Because it points at a different host, which is the definition the tool applies. It is flagged as an own subdomain rather than folded into the internal count, since a link from example.com to app.example.com leaves the host but not the organisation and is not a third-party endorsement. Reading those separately from the rest is usually what you want, which is why they are labelled rather than hidden.
Why do some links show no anchor text?
Because the link wraps an image with no alt attribute, or wraps nothing at all. Anchor text is the main thing telling a crawler and a screen reader what a link is for, so a link with neither text nor image alt is a link nobody can describe. When a link does wrap an image, the tool reports the alt text in its place, which is what a crawler reads.
Does the checker find links added by JavaScript?
No. It reads the HTML your server returns, which is what a crawler reads first. A link injected by JavaScript in the browser is not counted here, and may not be seen by a crawler on its first pass either. If the tool reports no outbound links on a page that visibly has them, that gap is itself the finding.
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Read guideTerms this tool checks
- Backlink
A backlink (also called an inbound link or incoming link) is a hyperlink from one website to another.
- Link Equity
Link equity (also called link juice or PageRank) is the ranking value passed from one page to another through hyperlinks.
- Anchor Text
Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink.
- Referring Domain
A referring domain is a unique website that contains at least one backlink pointing to your site.
Audit outbound links across the whole site, not one page
A partner link in a template reaches every page at once, and one URL will never show you that. CrawlRaven crawls the site, records the outbound profile of every page, and joins it to the Search Console data so you can see which pages the pattern is actually costing you.