Broken Links Reports are a lot like SEO audits--you get a large list of things you could fix, but the reality is that a lot of them are mostly functioning and you have to make some decisions about what you'll prioritize fixing. Some sites will always throw a particular code (particularly the 300-level codes). Working with your report means figuring out what those are so you can ignore that noise. Here's some general guidance:
General code guidance
In general, 400- and 500-level codes signify broken links (while most 300-levels are redirects that load successfully). But that's not always true.
While you might want to spot-check a few of them, ignoring 401 or 403 codes is likely a safe choice. Most of the 403 errors we investigated seemed to be perfectly functioning pages, and we now use the ignore checkboxes for these codes when we run our own reports.
Learn your false errors
You may also learn that certain errors seem tied to certain sites and aren't "real" broken links. We've noticed in our own testing that certain domains throw some errors on all URLs, even valid ones. In most cases, this is because the domains or sites block the kinds of automated requests we make to check the status code.
For example: We reference Zapier documentation a lot. Basically every link to Zapier documentation throws a 405 error (405: Method Not Allowed). If we view the pages in our browser, they load fine. But if we make the cURL request that our broken link checker uses (curl -I https://url-to-check.com), the 405 error is again returned. Zapier doesn't support this method of checking URLs. 🫤
We now generally ignore 405 codes on Zapier hyperlinks since we know this is an issue.
Let us know how we can help
You'll likely develop your own set of quirks like this as you work with your own report. If there's a status code you'd like us to add to the checkbox options of codes to ignore, contact us and let us know which code and some examples of sites that are throwing it. These reports can be noisy and we're happy to add some more filters to make them a bit quieter as you need!
