YouTube Broken Link Checker
Over time, sponsor links, affiliate products, merch stores, and social accounts in your video descriptions stop working. Scan your YouTube channel to find dead links, fix them in YouTube Studio, and stop losing affiliate sales.
Connecting to YouTube and extracting video descriptions...
This scan runs automatically in the background. You can safely close this page and come back anytime; your results will remain saved under Previous Recent Scans for 3 days.
Every link in your scanned descriptions returned a valid status. Zero broken links found.
| Video | Status | Target Link & Context | Issue Detail | Studio Action |
|---|
Why Links in YouTube Descriptions Stop Working
Every creator puts links in their video descriptions. You add links to affiliate products on Amazon, sponsor websites, gear recommendations, merchandise stores, Discord communities, and your social profiles. When you first upload a video, every single link works as expected.
Fast forward two, three, or five years. The web changes constantly:
- Affiliate campaigns shut down: Brands cancel affiliate offers, change affiliate networks, or modify link structures.
- Products get discontinued: Sellers on Amazon, Best Buy, or Shopify remove old product listings, leaving dead 404 pages in their place.
- Websites rebrand and migrate: Companies move from old domains to new ones (for example, Twitter moving to x.com), and older URLs sometimes stop resolving properly.
- Shortened links go offline: Free URL shorteners shut down, change their business models, or expire after a certain period of inactivity.
- Community links expire: Discord server invites, Telegram channels, or forum threads frequently expire without you noticing.
The biggest issue is that your evergreen videos keep getting views. Viewers searching YouTube find your older reviews, tutorials, and recommendations every week. When they click an affiliate link to buy something you recommended and hit a 404 page, you lose that commission completely. Even worse, it makes your channel look abandoned.
Why Checking Links by Hand Is Nearly Impossible
Let us look at the math for an average channel. If you have 150 videos and each description contains 8 links, that is 1,200 links. If you have 500 videos, that is 4,000 links.
Checking those links by hand means opening each video, expanding the description box, clicking every single URL in a new tab, waiting for the webpage to load, and keeping notes in a spreadsheet of what failed. Doing that for a few thousand links takes 15 to 20 hours of tedious manual work. Because nobody has time to do that, broken links sit untouched in descriptions for years.
We built this tool to solve that exact problem. It reads all your video descriptions, pulls every link, and checks whether the destination server is alive and returning an active webpage.
How Our Broken Link Scanner Works Under the Hood
We believe in complete transparency about how our system operates:
1. Public Video Discovery via YouTube API
You enter your channel URL or creator handle (like @mkbhd). We use the official YouTube Data API to fetch your uploads list. We do not ask for your channel password, Google login, or management permissions for public channel scans.
2. Description URL Extraction and De-duplication
Our scanner parses the full text of every video description and pulls all web URLs. If you used the same affiliate link across 50 different videos, we de-duplicate the URL so we only need to test it once on the web. This keeps the scan fast and prevents hitting external websites with repeated requests.
3. Real HTTP Requests and Redirect Following
Our scanner sends direct HTTP GET requests to each target URL. If you used a shortened link like amzn.to or bit.ly, our system follows the redirect hops to see where the user actually lands. We check whether the final page returns a healthy status code (like 200 OK) or an error.
4. Clear Issue Classification
We do not just give you raw numbers. We label each result so you immediately understand what happened:
- Active Link: The website is alive and returned a valid response.
- Redirect: The link forwards visitors to a new URL that works. We show you the final destination address.
- Page Not Found (404): The page or product has been removed from the server.
- Domain Not Found: The domain name has expired, or the DNS records have been deleted.
- Server Unresponsive: The server timed out or refused the connection.
How We Prevent False Alarms on Amazon and Social Media
One of the biggest flaws with basic link checkers is that they report hundreds of false alarms. Big platforms like Amazon, Twitter/X, Instagram, and LinkedIn use automated security shields (like Cloudflare and Akamai) that block basic computer scripts with 403 Forbidden or 503 challenge pages.
If a link scanner is dumb, it marks all your Amazon affiliate links and social profiles as broken. We built two specific features to eliminate this:
- Browser Navigation Headers: Our scanner uses authentic browser headers, so major platforms recognize the request as genuine navigation rather than an automated bot attack.
- Browser HSTS Simulation: Modern browsers automatically upgrade older
http://links to securehttps://before connecting. Sites like Twitter/X reject older port 80 connections with server errors. Our scanner simulates browser behavior by testing the secure HTTPS upgrade, ensuring active profiles are not marked as broken.
How to Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Channel
1. Enter Your Channel Link or Handle
Type or paste your channel URL (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/@yourname) or handle into the input box at the top and click Scan Channel Links.
2. Filter by Broken Links
Once the scan completes, click the Broken filter tab. The table immediately filters to show only the links that failed.
3. Sort by Video Views
By default, results are sorted by video views in descending order. This lets you fix dead links on your most popular videos first, where you are losing the most potential revenue and clicks.
4. Click Edit in Studio to Fix in One Click
Next to each broken link, click the Edit in Studio button. This opens that exact video's editing page in YouTube Studio in a new tab. We show you the snippet of text right around the broken link so you can spot it in your description immediately, replace it with a working URL, and save.
5. Export Your Audit Report
If you work with an assistant, video editor, or channel manager, click the Export button to download your full audit to Excel, CSV, PDF, Word, JSON, or Markdown.
Simple and Transparent Credit Pricing 1 Credit per 500 Videos
We do not lock you into expensive monthly subscriptions. Our pricing is pay-as-you-go and based strictly on the number of videos checked:
- Free Sample Scan: Anyone can scan the top 10 videos on any channel for free to test the scanner and see what issues exist.
- Full Channel Scans: 1 credit for every 500 videos scanned (for example, up to 500 videos costs 1 credit; up to 1,000 videos costs 2 credits). We support channels up to 20,000 videos.
- 3-Day Persistent Results: Your scan results stay saved in our database for 3 full days. You can close your browser, come back tomorrow, and continue fixing links without re-scanning or paying again.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do links in video descriptions stop working?
Links stop working because websites change over time. Product listings get discontinued, affiliate campaigns end, domains change, URL shorteners close down, or social media usernames change. Even though your videos are still getting views, the links inside their descriptions lead to dead error pages.
Can I scan any YouTube channel or only my own?
You can scan any public YouTube channel or creator handle. The tool uses the official YouTube Data API to read public video descriptions. No password or channel login is required.
What is the difference between a broken link and a redirect?
A broken link returns an error such as 404 Page Not Found, domain expired, or connection timed out, meaning visitors cannot access the page. A redirect means the link automatically forwards visitors to a new URL that works, such as an affiliate shortener sending the visitor to an online store.
How does the scanner avoid false alarms on Amazon or social links?
Big websites like Amazon, Twitter/X, and Instagram use anti-bot gates that block simple crawlers. Our scanner uses real browser navigation headers and simulates modern browser HSTS security upgrades so active social profiles and store pages are not mistakenly marked as broken.
How do I fix dead links once they are found?
Click the Edit in Studio button next to any broken link in your report. This opens the YouTube Studio video details page in a new browser tab. You can find the link in your description, paste your replacement URL, and click Save.
How much does a full channel scan cost?
Sample scans of the first 10 videos are free for everyone. Full channel scans cost 1 credit for every 500 videos scanned (for example, up to 500 videos costs 1 credit, up to 1,000 videos costs 2 credits). Results stay saved in your account for 3 full days.
Can I export the report for my team or client?
Yes. You can export your full report to Excel (.xlsx), CSV, PDF, Word (.docx), JSON, Markdown, Plain Text, HTML, XHTML, or YAML with a single click.