Valid links being marked as broken

Hi @yorkslad12,

It appears the website URL you have shared isn’t loading at the moment getting the following error:
DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

I would assume there is a typo in the URL provided.

Just to be sure, are all those URLs listed reporting a status 404 error? or does it pick a different error status?

You can find more info by clicking the “Details” for the status:

View post on imgur.com

Possible to also mention which where the URLs that we picked having issues too?

Kind Regards,

Nithin

There are 645 broken links, all of which are reporting “Unknown error”.

I did change DNS servers earlier in the week which might explain not finding inbound links to my own site, but that doesn’t explain that message for www.remarpro.com, automattic.com, and similar.

I just did a forced recheck; everything is still coming back as “Unknown error”, and all of the links I’ve followed so far are valid, or 301/302 redirects.

Gary

Hi @yorkslad12

Thank you for response!

Could you please share a few (not all of them of course, just a few) example links reported? Let’s say 2-3 that are to your site and 2-3 that are external.

Also, for those links please click on “Details” link under the “Unknown error” status and you should see there additional information so let us know:
– if HTTP code is 0 or some other code (if other, what is it)?
– and if there are any “Response headers” logged other than just “Link is broken”, if yes – what are they?

Kind regards,
Adam

External examples:

jetpack.com – http code 0, log === (No response) ===

https://www.cipr.co.uk/ – http code 0, log === (No response) ===

Internal example:

https://garytaylor.uk/cookie-policy-uk/ – http code 0, log === (No response) ===

https://garytaylor.uk/thoughts/ – http code 0, log === (No response) ===

Is that what you were after?

Just looked at the error_log file in my root directory; it has hundreds of entries since 17 July that say

[21-Jul-2024 02:08:18 UTC] PHP Warning: Undefined array key “status” in /xxxx/xxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxxxx/wp-content/plugins/broken-link-checker/legacy/modules/checkers/http.php on line 442

Hi @yorkslad12

Thank you for response!

As for the example links and their details – yes, that was what I was after.

The error (or rather a warning) that you are seeing in logs is not the cause but a consequence of this. The specific line is meant to check and handle HTTP response code. As the details show

http code 0, log === (No response) ===

it means that the attempt to check given link – the HTTP request to the URL – actually get no response at all.

I admit this is a bit strange. It is known issue that some of the services (especially e.g. behind CloudFlare or belonging to some big services that have a very strict “anti-bot” or “anti-crawl” policy; a strict access control in general) would block such checks but that should usually result in HTTP responses such as “403 forbidden” or similar and not no response at all.

Given the fact that there’s also the same “no response” result from your own site, I suspect that there’s some other aspect involved but I’m not sure yet what.

You mentioned that it all started at some point.

Were there some updates made to the site or changes in some security settings? Is the site using some kind of security/firewall plugin (and if yes what is it) and/or is there some additional firewall similar security layer at the server level (and if yes, what is it)?

Kind regards,
Adam

I did think I had Wordfence installed but I don’t (it’s on a different site), so just Akismet. If there’s a server-level firewall I’d be amazed (with my provider).

I could try deactivating and deleting the plugin, and installing a fresh copy, see if that resets things? There’s always the possibility that something went awry during the server move we did, just before WP6.6 came out.

Restarted the scan again last night, and it’s now only showing 23 broken links, mostly 404s or 403s, a few of which are false positives (which I can clean up).

Thing is, last night they were coming up as Unknown again… and there were more of them…

No idea what happened, but the site looks a bit better than it did for not having every link crossed out ??

• This reply was modified 8 months ago by yorkslad12.