How to Fix Broken Links Using AI

Your website, blog or online store for sure has broken links that are resulting in a 404 page.

Not only is this bad UX, you also may be hurting your page rank through poor internal linking and increasing your bounce rate.

So, let me show you how to quickly and easily fix broken links with the help of AI (Gemini, Grok, ChatGPT).

Here’s the workflow in a nutshell:

1. Run a scan with Dead Link Checker (or any of the tools listed below).
2. Copy the report and paste it into an AI tool with a prompt asking it to prioritize what to fix.
3. Work through the list starting with highest priority items.
4. Use the AI’s output to know exactly which pages to navigate to and which links to update or remove.

That’s it. Done.

What used to take hours of manual digging through a confusing report now takes a fraction of the time because you’re letting AI do the thinking while you’re doing the fixing.

Step 1: Find Your Broken Links with Dead Link Checker

The best free tool for this is Dead Link Checker (deadlinkchecker.com) in my opinion. There are a lot of options for this, I’ll list alternatives down below.

1. Go to the site and enter your full domain name.
2. Select “whole website” (not just a single page).
3. Enter the CAPTCHA and click Check.
4. Wait a few minutes for the scan to complete.

You’ll end up with a report showing which links are working and which are returning 404 errors. For example, a site might have 1,846 working links and 154 broken ones.

The problem?

You’re staring at a wall of data with no idea where to start. That’s where AI comes in.

Step 2: Copy the Report and Send It to AI

Once the scan is done:

1. Scroll through the full list of broken links on Dead Link Checker.
2. Right-click and copy all the data.
3. Open your AI tool of choice, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, or any other.
4. Paste the data into a new chat.

Use a prompt like this:

“I’m going to give you a bunch of data on the broken links on my site. Tell me which ones to focus on to update so I don’t waste my time.”

The key focus is to tell the AI what do 100% need to fix now and what can safely be ignored.

Step 3: Review Your AI-Generated Priority Report

The AI will analyze all those broken links and organize them into a prioritized action plan.

Here’s an example of what that output might look like:

Highest Priority — Fix These First

• Content 404s: Internal pages you’re linking to that no longer exist. If the content matters, recreate it. If it doesn’t, update or remove the link.
• Broken image sources: Great example, if you previously used Amazon Associates embedded images and that feature was removed, you’ll have a batch of broken image requests to clean up. These are often concentrated in a single blog post, so it’s more manageable than it looks.
• Embedded video 403s: Videos you’ve embedded on your site that aren’t set to allow embedding. Go to your YouTube channel settings and enable embedding for those videos.
• Affiliate and tool links: Outdated links to products or services you’ve recommended that no longer exist or have been moved to a different URL, update these to current URLs.

Medium Priority — Do These When You Have Time

Generic outbound links that are 404ing but aren’t critical. Worth fixing eventually, but not urgent.

Ignore These for Now

The AI will also flag links you can safely deprioritize, often tracking pixels, ad scripts, or external resources outside your control.

Step 4: Fix the Broken Links

Now that you know exactly what to fix and where, here’s how to actually do it.

For internal links (links on your own site):

1. Hover over the broken link in the Dead Link Checker report, the bottom of your browser will show you which page on your site contains that link.
2. Navigate to that page in your CMS (WordPress, Webflow, etc.).
3. Open the page editor and use Ctrl+F to search for the broken URL.
4. Update the link to a working URL, or remove it entirely if the destination no longer exists.

Quick example: If the report shows a link to twosigma.com is 404ing, and mousing over it reveals it lives on a specific post, navigate to that post, find the link, and either update it to a working URL or delete it.

For images:

Find the blog post or page that contains the broken image reference, remove the old embed, and replace it with a working image or remove it altogether.

7 Other Tools to Find Broken Links

Dead Link Checker is a great but it’s not the only game in town. Here are other options depending on your setup:

1. Google Search Console: Go to Indexing > Pages and look for the “Not Found” section. It’ll show you exactly which URLs Google has flagged as 404s.
2. Broken Link Check (brokenlinkcheck.com): Similar to Dead Link Checker. Paste the full report into AI and go from there.
3. Ahrefs Broken Link Checker: Free when logged out, but limited to a handful of results. Good for a quick spot-check.
4. Screaming Frog: Powerful, but the free version caps at 500 URLs. Paid version is unlimited and well worth it if you have a large site.
5. Broken Link Checker (WordPress plugin): Runs passively in the background on your WordPress site. Not as fast or hands-on as the other tools, but useful for ongoing monitoring.
6. Link Whisperer: A premium WordPress plugin focused on internal linking. It also flags broken links and orphan pages. At $8/month for the starter plan, it’s worth running for a month to do a full cleanup.
7. Check My Links (Chrome extension): A browser extension that scans any page you’re on for broken links. Great for checking individual pages on the fly.

Final Thoughts

Fixing 404, broken links is a small, quick win you can do in a hour. Run the report, hand if off to AI and get to work.

Your man,

-David