LinkSlope: A Broken Link Checker for Chrome
Broken links are easy to miss. A page moves, an external website disappears, or an old URL stays buried in a blog post. Everything looks fine until someone clicks the link and lands on a 404 page.
I built LinkSlope to make those issues easier to find and fix. It’s a Chrome extension that scans a website, checks its links, and shows which pages reference each URL.
My aim was to make the journey from “this link is broken” to “here’s where I need to fix it” straightforward.
What LinkSlope Does
LinkSlope crawls links in website HTML and can discover additional pages through XML sitemaps. It presents the results in a searchable report, with filters for issues, working links, redirects, unverified requests, and skipped URLs.
You can use it to:
- Find 404 errors, missing pages, and server errors.
- Check internal links and optionally external links.
- Inspect redirects, including 301 and 302 responses.
- Locate the source pages that reference a URL.
- Check images, stylesheets, and script files referenced in HTML.
- Re-test individual links after making a fix.
- Download the results as CSV or JSON.
For website owners and content editors, it helps with routine maintenance. For developers and SEO professionals, it can support link checks during content updates, website migrations, and technical SEO audits.
Getting Started
Once LinkSlope is installed, open Chrome’s extensions menu and click LinkSlope — Broken Link Checker. The scanner opens in its own tab.
Enter the full website address in Target website, for example:
https://example.comBefore starting, open Settings to choose how much of the website you want to scan.
For a first run, I suggest setting Maximum pages to crawl to a small number, such as 25. That gives you a manageable report while you get familiar with the extension.
To check only the links on the starting page, enable Run once under Advanced crawl settings.
Click Start scan when you’re ready.
Choosing What to Check
By default, LinkSlope follows internal HTML links and reads sitemap information. External link checks and resource checks are optional.
Enable Test external URLs if you want to check links pointing to other websites. Those destinations are checked without crawling the links on their pages.
To check assets, enable Crawl resources like images, stylesheets, and scripts. This is useful when a page loads but references a missing image, CSS file, or JavaScript file. Assets hosted on other origins also need external checks enabled or their host added to Accepted hosts.
You can also:
- Set a maximum crawl depth or page count.
- Exclude paths you don’t want requested.
- Adjust request speed and timeouts.
- Include additional hosts in the crawl.
These controls let you choose between a small, focused check and a broader website scan.
Following the Scan
As LinkSlope works, the activity panel shows progress. Summary cards track checked links, healthy links, issues, redirects, and crawled pages.
You can Pause the scan, adjust settings, and Resume it. Changes apply to remaining requests; pages already processed are not revisited.
If you need to finish early, click Stop. The partial results remain available for review and export.
Keep the scanner tab open while it works. The current scan is held in memory, so closing or reloading the tab clears it.
Reading the Link Report
When results appear, start with the Issues filter. This brings broken links, server errors, and failed content checks into view.
Use Search URLs to find a particular destination or path. Other filters help you inspect working links, redirects, unverified requests, and skipped URLs.
One distinction I wanted to make clear is that an unsuccessful check doesn’t always mean a broken link. A website might block a request, require authentication, or return a rate-limit response. LinkSlope separates those inconclusive results so you can investigate them.
Likewise, a skipped URL may simply fall outside your chosen scan settings.
Finding Where to Fix a Broken Link
A broken destination is only part of the problem—you also need to know where it was linked.
Click the magnifying-glass button in a report row to open Link details. Here you can inspect the result, HTTP status, destination, request timing, and suggested action.
Expand a source page to see the captured HTML that references the URL. You can then open that source page and locate the link in your website’s editor or code.
This is the part of LinkSlope I find particularly useful: the report gives you a destination to investigate and the source information needed to act on it.
Checking a Fix
After updating the link or restoring the missing page, click Re-test link.
Re-testing checks that individual destination again and updates its report row and the summary counts. It’s available after the scan finishes or stops.
It doesn’t refresh the source HTML or discover new pages. If you’ve changed links across the website, start a fresh scan to get an updated picture.
Exporting and Sharing Results
After a scan finishes or stops, choose CSV or JSON and click Download.
CSV works well for reviewing results in a spreadsheet or creating a list of fixes. It includes URLs, outcomes, HTTP statuses, final destinations, timing, and source pages.
JSON also includes scan metadata and summary information, including whether the scan was partial.
Exports include the full report, even if the table is currently filtered.
There’s also an optional Email report feature. After configuring an email service, you can send a compact scan summary manually or automatically when a scan completes. For individual link results, use the CSV or JSON download.
A Note About SPAs and Dynamic Content
LinkSlope currently reads the HTML returned by the server. It does not execute the website’s JavaScript.
That means links already present in the response HTML can be discovered, but links created only after JavaScript runs may be missed. This matters for some single-page applications, dynamically loaded navigation, and content revealed by scrolling or clicking.
Sitemaps can help LinkSlope discover additional page URLs, but they don’t reveal every link inside those pages.
I want to be clear about this limitation so you can judge whether the scan covers your website’s needs.
Where the Scan Runs
LinkSlope runs its scanning requests in the extension tab on your device. You don’t need a LinkSlope account to use it.
It requests website access to fetch pages and check links across the sites you choose to scan. It also uses permissions for redirect inspection and a request-header adjustment used by optional Mailtrap email delivery.
If you enable email reporting, the scan summary is sent through the service you configure.
Give LinkSlope a Try
If you maintain a blog, manage website content, or regularly check sites for broken links, LinkSlope gives you a way to find issues, trace their sources, and verify fixes from Chrome.
Start with a small scan, look through the issues, and try the source inspection and re-test features.
Install LinkSlope: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/dmikbdlpjibggjielhdjnblamljaldio Source code and issue reports: https://github.com/arunelias/linkslope
If you try it, I’d love to hear what worked well and what would make it more useful in your workflow.