Web Governance
FAQ broken links troubleshooting
This document answers some common issues regarding broken links found by the Web Governance scan.
There are several possible reasons for links to be flagged as broken or with errors when they are actually not:
The target server was down at the time of the scan.
A re-scan normally fixes the problem. Ignore the link to stop checking this link permanently, or Mark as Fixed if it is a temporary known issue.
The target server might be set to block site scanners and spiders such as ours.
Sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and others block scanners that make many requests to their site. We scan thousands of websites every day and make many requests to these websites and they do often block our scanner. This can cause the scan to hang or stop. In most cases, you can safely ignore the link if you know that it is correct. The Web Governance scan is configured to ignore these links automatically when they are reported to us.
For more information, see the User Guide article:
Links that the Scan Automatically Ignores.
The target server has an invalid HTTPS certificate.
An invalid certificate causes the link to be marked as dead. Get in touch with the manager of the website and ask them to fix their certificate, or ignore the link if this is impossible.
The link points to a login page.
The link points to a page that requires a login. Such pages are often tagged as 'dead'. Ignore the link to stop checking this link permanently, or Mark as Fixed if it is a temporary (for example, in an unpublished state) known issue.
If the scan flags many duplicate pages where the URLs are only different because of capitalized words within the URL, there is an option turn this off in the scan setup.
In the OFF position, the Web Governance scan sees all URLs as lowercase - no matter how they are actually written in the target website. Turn OFF only in rare cases where the target website does not recognize caps and reads all links in lowercase, which results in duplicates in the flagged scan issues. This is an advanced configuration that should normally be left to the default setting.
From the Web Governance Domain Overview (Globe icon) click Settings (the gear icon) at the top of the page. The Admin Settings page opens.
The Settings button is only available to site admins.
On the Admin settings page, click Action on the same row as a domain. A drop-down list expands.
Case sensitive URLs: Toggle the switch OFF to instruct the scan to ignore capitalization within links, or ON to instruct the scan to make URL links case-sensitive.
Links on pages that return error 403 (forbidden errors) can be classified as broken with this option in Settings.
From the Web Governance Domain Overview (Globe icon) click Settings (the gear icon) at the top of the page. The Admin Settings page opens.
The Settings button is only available to site admins.
On the Admin settings page, click Action on the same row as a domain. A drop-down list expands.
Select Edit Domain. The Edit Domain page opens.
Some sites that use shopping features may generate a great many 403 errors. One thing to try is to change the crawl speed from "normal" to "slow". This should resolve this issue and only flag links that are actually broken.
A canonical URL is the URL of the page that Google determines is most representative, taken from a set of duplicate pages on the website.
From the Web Governance Domain Overview (Globe icon) click Settings (the gear icon) at the top of the page. The Admin Settings page opens.
The Settings button is only available to site admins.
On the Admin settings page, click Action on the same row as a domain. A drop-down list expands.
Select Edit Domain. The Edit Domain page opens.
For more information about Quality Assurance, see the following articles:
Example OFF: http://monsido.com/Foo/Bar is seen as the same link as http://monsido.com/foo/bar.
Example ON: The same links above will register as two different links.
In the OFF position, the Web Governance scan sees all URLs as lowercase - no matter how they are actually written in the target website. Turn OFF only in rare cases where the target website does not recognize caps and reads all links in lowercase, which results in duplicates in the flagged scan issues. This is an advanced configuration that should normally be left to the default setting.
Web Governance