Running a website may look easy, but there’s a lot of work and re-work that goes on behind the scenes (tell me about it – Ed). When you write for the web, there are countless things you have to consider before hitting that “Publish” button, and sometimes it’s the small details that gets overlooked. In the case of broken links, it’s the readers who are left struggling in the dark.

To help you avoid these problems in the future, a Google Chrome extension called Check My Links is free for download. The extension scans a web page for any broken links with just one click.

After installing the extension, an H icon appears on the add-on bar located on the top-right corner of the browser. Clicking on this will run the link check on the current page. In the example below, there are 81 links on the page with 2 broken links. Valid links are highlighted in green and broken ones in red. Now, half your work is done!

 

Installing this extension is a brilliant way to save time when checking a web page or a blog post before publishing. It certainly saves your eyes and hands (from all the clicking).