Table of Contents
Introduction
This chapter gives information on how to use the quality assurance feature to locate and handle broken links with Monsido.
From the Monsido Domain Overview, click Select Domain.
The Domains list opens.
Click on the domain name. The Dashboard opens.
From the Monsido Domain Overview, click Select Domain. The Domain Overview page opens.
Click on the domain name. The Dashboard for the domain opens.
Click Quality Assurance (the checkbox icon), on the toolbar.
The Quality Assurance page opens.
Links Instructions
Click Links from the menu on the left-hand side of the page.
The menu expands with the following options:
Content with Broken Links
Click this option in the Links sub-menu on the left-hand side of the page to view the URLs of any pages that contain broken links. This is the default page that opens when Links is selected.
Navigate between All, Pages, PDF Documents, and Text Documents.
Click Export to export the list.
A dialog box opens. Select your export file:
Broken Links with Page Count
Broken Links Per Page.
A message informs that, "Your export is currently being generated, You will receive an email when the export is ready." To view the progress, click the avatar icon on the main toolbar and select My Exports, or click Go to My Exports.
Click Filter (the funnel icon) to filter for:
Labels
Type
Response code
Internal or external
Search: Click in the dialog box and type a search string.
The table with the results has the headers:
Title and URL: This is the title and URL of the content that has been targeted with errors. Click the URL. The Broken Links pane slides open.
Notifications: Click to expand a quick-info box on the notifications for the URL.
Priority: Low, Medium, High as determined by the number of page views.
For more information, see the User Guide chapter:
Views: Approximate number of page views since the last scan. This information is only available when Statistics is enabled.
Open Issue Page: On the same row as an issue on the right, click Open Issue Page (an i for information icon) on the same row as an issue.
For more information about Issue View see the user guide article:
Open page details (webpage icon): On the same row as a page, click Open Page Details.
The details page opens.
Broken Links
Click this option in the Links sub-menu on the left-hand side of the page to see the overview and status of broken links.
Navigate between All broken links, ignored, and Marked as fixed.
Click Export to export the list.
A dialog box opens. Select your export file:
Broken Links with Page Count
Broken Links Per Page
A message informs that, "Your export is currently being generated, You will receive an email when the export is ready." To view the progress, click the avatar icon on the main toolbar and select My Exports, or click Go to My Exports.
Click Filter (the funnel icon) to filter for:
Labels
Type
Response code
Internal or external
Search: Click in the dialog box and type a search string.
The table with the results has the headers:
Broken Link: This is the link that is broken. Click the URL. The Broken Links page opens.
PageCorrect: Click to navigate to PageCorrect to view and correct the error. See the User Guide chapter PageCorrect for instructions.
Response code: This column shows the error code that is received for the link.
Type: This column lists the type of error that is detected.
Pages: This column gives information on where the broken link is located.
Documents: The broken link is found in this many documents.
Pages: The broken link is found on this many pages of the website.
Action: Click the button to expand the list of actions to take for the link. Select from the following:
Mark as fixed: Marks the link as fixed. It will be included in subsequent scans and if the error returns, it will appear again in the broken links list. Select this option when the error is actually fixed by the web team on the HTML code of the webpage, or if it is a temporary (for example, in an unpublished state) known issue.
Mark as ignored: Ignore the link. Use this option if you know the link is not broken. Ignored links are not included in subsequent scans and will not show up as broken.
Note: The difference between Mark as Fixed and Mark as Ignored is that issues marked as Fixed are still included in future scans and can be flagged again if the error persists. Issues that are set to Ignore are permanently omitted from future scans and compliance scores.
Broken Images
Click this option in the Links sub-menu on the left-hand side of the page to view the list of images that have broken links.
Tip: An example of a broken image could be an icon button with a broken path.
Click Open Issue Page (an exclamation point icon) to see all of the broken image links on a single page.
Note: Although the Quality Assurance Module is a highly effective way to find broken links on images, false positives can occur. For best results, it is important to manually review the findings.
Navigate between All broken images, ignored, and Marked as fixed.
Click Export to export the list.
A dialog box opens. Select your export file:
Broken Images with Page Count
Broken Image Links Per Page
A message informs that, "Your export is currently being generated, You will receive an email when the export is ready." To view the progress, click the avatar icon on the main toolbar and select My Exports, or click Go to My Exports.
Click Filter ( the funnel icon) to filter for:
Labels
Type
Response code
Internal or external
Search: Click in the dialog box and type a search string.
The table with the results has the headers:
Broken Link: This is the link that is broken. Click the URL. The Broken Links page opens.
PageCorrect: Click to navigate to PageCorrect to view and correct the error. See the User Guide chapter PageCorrect for instructions.
Response code: This column shows the error code that is received for the link.
Type: This column lists the type of error that is detected.
Pages: This column gives information on where the broken link is located.
Documents: The broken link is found in this many documents.
Pages: The broken link is found on this many pages of the website.
Action: Click the button to expand the list of actions to take for the link. Select from the following:
Mark as fixed: Marks the link as fixed. It will be included in subsequent scans and if the error returns, it will appear again in the broken links list. Select this option when the error is actually fixed by the web team on the HTML code of the webpage, or if it is a temporary (for example, in an unpublished state) known issue.
Mark as ignored: Ignore the link. Use this option if you know the link is, in fact, OK. Ignored links are not included in subsequent scans and will not show up as broken.
Note: The difference between Mark as Fixed and Mark as Ignored is that issues marked as Fixed are still included in future scans and can be flagged again if the error persists. Issues that are set to Ignore are permanently omitted from future scans and compliance scores.
For more information, see the User Guide chapter:
Troubleshooting
This section answers some common issues that customers encounter regarding broken links found by the Monsido scan.
Links are marked as broken when they are not
There are several possible reasons why links are flagged as broken or with errors when they are actually not:
The target server was down at the time of the scan.
A re-scan normally fixes the problem. Ignore the link to stop checking this link permanently, or Mark as Fixed if it is a temporary known issue.
The target server might be set to block site scanners and spiders like the Monsido Bot.
Social media sights can sometimes block scanners that make many requests to their site. Monsido scans thousands of websites every day and makes many requests to these websites. In most cases, you can safely ignore the link if you know that it is correct.
The target server has an invalid HTTPS certificate.
An invalid certificate causes the link to be marked as dead. Get in touch with the manager of the website and ask them to fix their certificate, or ignore the link if this is impossible.
The link points to a login page.
The link points to a page that requires a login. Such pages are often tagged as 'dead'. Ignore the link to stop checking this link permanently, or Mark as Fixed if it is a temporary (for example, in an unpublished state) known issue.
The same broken link appears in duplicate because of caps in the URL
If the scan flags many duplicate pages where the URLs are only different because of capitalized words within the URL, there is an option turn this off in the scan setup.
From the Monsido Domain Overview (the globe icon) click Settings (the gear icon) at the top of the page. The Admin Settings page opens.
Note: The Settings button is only available to site admins.
On the Admin settings page, click Action on the same row as a domain. A drop-down list expands.
Select Edit Domain. The Edit Domain page opens.
Case sensitive URLs: Toggle the switch OFF to instruct the scan to ignore capitalization within links, or ON to instruct the scan to make URL links case-sensitive.
Example OFF: http://monsido.com/Foo/Bar is seen as the same link as http://monsido.com/foo/bar.
Example ON: The same links above will register as two different links.
Important! In the OFF position, the Monsido scan sees all URLs as lowercase - no matter how they are actually written in the target website. Turn OFF only in rare cases where the target website does not recognize caps and reads all links in lowercase, which results in duplicates in the flagged scan issues. This is an advanced configuration that should normally be left to the default setting.
How to mark 403 errors as broken links
Links on pages that return error 403 (forbidden errors) can be classified as broken with this option in Settings.
From the Monsido Domain Overview (the globe icon) click Settings (the gear icon) at the top of the page. The Admin Settings page opens.
Note: The Settings button is only available to site admins.
On the Admin settings page, click Action on the same row as a domain. A drop-down list expands.
Select Edit Domain. The Edit Domain page opens.
Mark 403 as broken link: In the Crawl Options section, toggle the Mark 403 as broken link switch ON. This causes the scan to flag any link that returns this error with the status Broken Link.
How to instruct the scan to ignore canonical URLs
A canonical URL is the URL of the page that Google determines is most representative, taken from a set of duplicate pages on the website.
From the Monsido Domain Overview (globe icon), click Settings (gear icon) at the top of the page. The Admin Settings page opens.
Note: The Settings button is only available to site admins.
On the same row as the domain to scan, click Action.
In the drop-down list, select Edit Domain.
The Edit Domain page opens.
Ignore canonical URLs: In the Crawl Options section, toggle the Ignore canonical URLs switch ON. This causes the scan to disregard canonical URLs.
Additional information:
For more information about Quality Assurance, see the following articles:
For further assistance, contact the Monsido support team at support@monsido.com or via the Monsido chat and help features inside the application.
Contact us
Monsido, an Optimere brand:
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5880 Oberlin Dr,
San Diego, CA 92121, USA
Australia & New Zealand
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Surry Hills, NSW 2010
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Borupvang 3
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London, UK
14 New Street
London, EC2M 4HE