Broken Links
The Broken Links analysis tab surfaces every link target across your crawl that returned a 4xx or 5xx status code. Results are grouped by the broken target URL, not listed flat, so you see each distinct problem once with the full set of pages that link to it.
How it works
During a crawl, Consuela follows every link it discovers — internal and external — and records the HTTP status code of each response. After the crawl completes, the Broken Links tab collects every target URL that returned a client error (4xx) or server error (5xx) and groups the results by that target.
The header shows two counts: the number of distinct broken URLs found, and the total number of links pointing to them. A single broken URL linked from fifty pages is one broken URL but fifty broken links — both numbers matter, because the first tells you how many fixes to make and the second tells you how many pages are affected.
Two issue rules drive the findings:
Both rules are critical because a broken link is a dead end for visitors and search engines alike. A 404 means the resource is gone; a 500 means the server failed to produce it. Either way, the link does not deliver what it promises.
Results table
Each row in the table represents one broken target URL. The columns are:
Expanding a row reveals the list of source pages that link to the broken target. Each source entry shows the page URL and the anchor text used in the link. This tells you not just where the broken link lives but what the visitor was promised when they clicked it.
Clicking a source page opens the page inspector for that URL, where you can see the full set of metadata, headers, outbound links, and issues for the page — not just the one broken link that brought you there.
Internal vs external
The Broken Links tab shows both internal and external broken links. The distinction matters because the two call for different responses.
Internal broken links — where the target is on the same domain you are crawling — are entirely under your control. A 404 on your own site means a page was removed or moved without updating the links that pointed to it. These are straightforward to fix: update the link, add a redirect, or restore the content.
External broken links — where the target is on another domain — may be temporary or outside your control. A 503 on someone else's server might clear up in an hour. A 404 might mean the resource was genuinely removed. You cannot fix the remote server, but you can update or remove the link on your pages so visitors are not sent to a dead end.
When prioritising fixes, internal broken links are usually the higher-value target: they affect your own site's crawlability and user experience, and you can resolve them immediately.