Same unbroken links being “broken” over and over

Hello @hbk747 ,

I checked those links and it looks like they are throwing 403 and 503 errors. That usually means that the site is blocking pings and Broken Link Checker can’t really check if the link is broken or not.

All of their links are unbroken but the plugin keeps reporting them as broken. It is reporting some legit broken links too but when I resolve the issues, after a while it says 40 broken links and will have the same unbroken links.

Just to be on the same page – when you mark those “broken” links as False-positive after a while the change back to broken? And those are always the same links? Do you recall how much time this takes to change?

kind regards,
Kasia

Hello @wpmudev-support2

Yes, many times they are the same links. Theres this amazon link (of a book) that keeps popping up. These days its usually jstor.org and the economist. As for the time, I resolved them yesterday and they are back again today ??

Now I have to get rid of them again lol

Please help

Hi @hbk747

Thank you for the information.

I found it is a reported bug, we will let our developers know about it and add this thread as an extra report. I am afraid we don’t have an estimated time to release the fixed version, but please, keep the plugin updated.

As those happen for Amazon links, you can try to add the word in the Exclusion list on Settings > Link Checker > Exclusion.

Best Regards
Patrick Freitas

@wpmudevsupport12

Okay I will try that and yes, good luck. Hope it comes out soon.

Today I got usnews, seattlenews, imf, and other mainstream websites shown as “broken” when they were not. And a lot of jstor as well.

Good luck.

Hope to see a fix soon.

Warm regards

Hi @hbk747

Thank you for the update, feel free to keep us posted.

Best Regards
Patrick Freitas

Hi @hbk747

I hope you are doing well and safe!

We haven’t heard from you in a while, I’ll mark this thread as resolved.

Feel free to let us know if you have any additional question or problem.

Best Regards
Patrick Freitas

Hello,

Yes, I am just waiting on the update because I just spent some time resolving the false positive links (and have been since a while). It was jstor.org again.

Hope to see the update soon.

Yes, you can mark this resolved since nothng more can be done now.

Thanks

Hi @hbk747

Thank you for the information.

Our developers are looking further on how to improve the Amazon links, the main issue is the plugin will report what the link returns to if, for example if we do a cURL request on a reported link from link description it will indeed return a 403:

curl -IL https://www.arabianbusiness.com/dubai-iran-trade-rebound-on-sanctions-relief-official-535532.html
HTTP/1.1 403 HTTP Forbidden
Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 468
Connection: keep-alive
Server: CloudFront
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2021 22:33:20 GMT
x-datadome: protected

This means the service won’t allow the cURL request.

Best Regards
Patrick Freitas