Broken Link Monitoring

How daily destination checks work, when a link is marked broken, and what each problem means.

SCT Pro checks where each of your links sends visitors, once a day. When a destination fails two days in a row, it appears on the Broken Links page and you can get an email or a Zapier message.

What gets checked

Every active (not archived) top-level link is checked. A standard link has one destination. A split test, rotator, or other multi-destination link is checked once per destination. Arm rows under a parent are not listed separately — they show under the parent link.

We only check public http and https addresses. FTP, credentials in the URL, and unusual ports are skipped.

How often, and when a link is marked broken

Checks run about once a day. One failed check marks the destination Failing. A second failed check the next day marks it Broken and sends the optional email (and any Zapier Zap you have for this event).

Example timeline:

• Monday 9:00 a.m. — the destination fails. It is Failing. No email yet.
• Tuesday 9:00 a.m. — it fails again. It is Broken. You get the email (unless you turned it off).

A single successful check after that clears the problem. A 429 (rate limited) or an address we refuse to fetch is inconclusive — it does not count as a failure.

What each problem means

The page was not found (404)

The site answered, but that path is gone. Fix the destination or the page on the site.

The page is gone (410)

The site says the page was removed on purpose. Update the destination.

The website refused access (401 / 403)

The site blocked our checker. Some Cloudflare and Amazon pages do this. If the page works in your browser, use Ignore.

The website had a server error (5xx)

The destination site had a problem. Try Check now later; if it keeps failing, talk to whoever hosts that page.

The website could not be found

DNS failed. The domain may be misspelled, expired, or no longer pointed at a server.

The website took too long to answer

The site timed out. It may be down or overloaded.

We could not connect

Nothing answered on the usual web ports. The server may be down.

Secure connection (HTTPS) problem

The certificate is expired, mismatched, or otherwise invalid. Visitors will see a browser warning too.

Redirect loop / too many redirects

The page sends the browser in a circle. Fix the redirects on that site.

This short link doesn’t exist

The destination is an SCT short link (ours or another account’s) whose path is missing. Update the destination to a working short link or to the real page.

Checks never count as clicks

The checker opens the destination page directly. It never visits your short link as a visitor, so totals, unique clicks, split and rotator assignments, fulfillment quotas, the 404 log, and funnel counts stay the same. If a destination (or a redirect along the way) is itself an SCT short link, we look that link up internally and check where it really sends people. We do not fetch our own hosts, so the check cannot record a click.

Check now, Ignore, and editing a destination

• Check now runs one check immediately. You can do this once a minute per destination.
• Ignore stops emails and Zapier events for that destination. Use it for sites that block checkers. You can stop ignoring later.
• Edit link opens the link editor. Changing the destination starts a fresh check and clears Ignore, because the new URL is a new destination.

Email and Zapier

Optional emails go to the account owner. Turn them on or off at Email Notifications. Team members do not get these emails.

If your plan includes Zapier, a Zap can start from Broken Link Found or Link Working Again. See Zapier.