# Checking for broken links in your website

> Find and fix broken links on your website using Google Search Console and the W3C Link Checker.

Source: https://helpcenter.ruachost.com/developers/networking/checking-for-broken-links-in-your-website/

Checking your website for broken links

Broken links can negatively affect both your SEO performance and user experience. Learn how to identify and fix broken links on your **ruachost.com** website.

This guide explains two effective methods for finding broken links:

1. **Google Search Console** – Automatically detects and reports broken links found by Google’s crawlers whenever they scan your site.
2. **W3C Link Checker** – Manually scans your website for broken links and pinpoints the exact lines in your HTML where those links appear.

**Method #1: Google Search Console**\
To continuously monitor your site for broken links using Google Search Console, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your **Google Search Console** account.

> **Note:**
If you don’t have a Google Search Console account yet, you can create one [here](https://search.google.com/search-console).

2. Select your website property (for example, **ruachost.com**). The Search Console dashboard will open.
3. In the left menu, click **Crawl**, then select **Fetch as Google**. From here, you can request Google to crawl specific pages on your website.

> **Note:**
The process is not instant — it may take up to a week for Google to crawl and update your site data.

4. Once Google has crawled your site, go to **Crawl → Crawl Errors**.
5. Under **URL Errors**, you’ll see any broken links or missing pages detected during the crawl.

**Method #2: W3C Link Checker**\
To manually check your site for broken links using the W3C Link Checker tool:

1. Visit the [W3C Link Checker](https://validator.w3.org/checklink).
2. In the text box labeled **Enter the address (URL) of a document that you would like to check**, type the URL of the site you want to scan (for example, `https://ruachost.com`).
3. To view only key results, select the **Summary Only** checkbox.
4. To include linked pages in your scan, select **Check linked documents recursively** and specify the recursion depth (the number of levels to check).
5. Click **Check**. The tool will begin scanning and display broken links as it processes each page.