Do broken links on my page matter to AI crawlers?
Yes. A crawler finds pages by following links, and a link that answers with an error is a dead end: whatever you meant to point at is never reached through it. A page with several of them also tells a machine the site is not being looked after.
What it actually is
A broken link is one whose destination answers "not found" or "server error" instead of a page. It might be a page that was deleted, an address that was mistyped, or another site that reorganised. We follow a sample of the links on your page and record what each one answers.
Why it matters
Links are how machines move through the web, and how they decide what is connected to what. A dead link breaks that path, and on your own site it can hide a page from every crawler that was relying on the link to find it. For a person it is a small disappointment; for an assistant deciding which sources are well kept, it is evidence.
What good looks like
Every link on the page leads somewhere that answers with the page it promised. Links to pages that moved point at their new address. Links to other sites are checked from time to time, because other sites change without telling you.
Being honest about it
We are careful about what we count. Many sites refuse automated visitors, so a link that answers "forbidden" or "slow down" to our scanner may work perfectly for people, and we never count those as broken. If too few of our checks complete to say anything with confidence, we leave the result off rather than call the page clean. What remains is links that answered, and answered with an error.
Where most sites go wrong
Most broken links are old: a page deleted during a redesign while older articles still point to it, or a resource on another site that moved years ago. The others are typos in an address, and links into a staging or preview site that only ever worked for the team that built it.
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