A broken link – also called a “dead link” – is a hyperlink that does not work. When you click on a broken link, it does not take you to the desired page What are broken links.
Hyperlinks often appear as underlined or highlighted text or images.
For example, a hyperlink on the Semrush blog looks like this:
But why do links break?
Let’s explore why links phone number lead break and how to fix them.
Why do links break?
The landing page is removed or moved
One of the most common reasons a link breaks is because the target page is removed or moved to a new URL without updating the link.
Deleted pages take the user to a 404 Not Found error page .
For example, let’s say eBay creates a temporary sales page and links to it throughout its site.
After the sale, they delete the page optimize your website for seo but forget to remove the links.
Customers clicking the old link to this page will now receive a 404 error and land on a page similar to this:
The 404 error page shows users that the site was unable to find the requested page, potentially leaving users frustrated and confused.
URL is incorrectly formatted
A poorly formatted URL can cause a 400 Bad Request error .
A 400 Bad Request error is similar to a 404, but occurs when there is a problem with the requested URL.
Why does it happen?
You may have misspelled the link when adding it to a page. Or someone may have misspelled the URL of the page you are linking to.
For example, let’s say you want to link to a product page But you accidentally include a “%” in the link, directing users to
The “%” symbol in the URL would give users a 400 Bad Request error.
A 400 Bad Request error might look like this:
This error occurs because the server cannot understand the request due to an invalid URL format. Therefore, it rejects the request and returns a 400 error, indicating that a bad request was made.
Change in website structure or URL
Hardcoded links containing the full URL may break if the site structure or URLs change.
For example, a page that transitioned
Outdated hardcoded links lead to “dead ends” instead of directing users to the active page in its new location.
This happens because the hardcoded URLs were not updated when the site architecture changed.
Broken images
Links pointing to images can also break when image files are moved or deleted without updating the links in the HTML code What are broken links.
The <img> link in the HTML code still points to the obsolete location, but the image file is gone.
That brings up the “missing image” icon which looks something like this:
When this happens, the page still contains the old image link that pointed to the file’s previous location. But the image file itself is gone, creating the broken link.
Domain name change
Links to redesigned, retired, or migrated external sites can cause broken outbound links.
External sites that return 502 Bad Gateway errors indicate that their servers cannot be found.
The resulting error page may look like this:
For example, your site may link to but visitors receive a Bad Gateway error because that domain no longer exists.
Why does it happen?
External sites naturally change over time: their domains change, they rebrand, or they are retired entirely. If internal links to these sites aren’t updated to reflect the changes, they continue to direct users to broken URLs.
Plugins that don’t work
Links in the code of third-party plugins australia database directory can break when the external platforms they depend on change their code.
For example, the social sharing buttons on the Backlinko blog shown in the image below will stop working if Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter) update their share button code.
Clicking the broken “Like” button could return a 404 error instead of allowing users to share your content.
This happens because your website is still running the old code, but Facebook’s servers now expect different code for their plugin to work.