QA Fraternity

Broken link verification

A web page normally contains many links that points to different page in the same website or to different website altogether. Any broken link on the web page not only annoys the users but also may become reason for user not returning back to the website again.

Verifying that there are no broken links on the web page before any change is pushed onto  live site is very important. Sometimes, when the number of links on the web page are few,  the verification might be easy and can be done manually. But, when the number of links grows (some 100's) then this becomes tedious.

Automating the verification of broken links is the smart way of achieving results. This can be done by using different open source tools. 

Easy and openly available solution can be developed using Excel Vba.  IE automation using Vba allows to built utility that will open the specific website url and get all the links on the page. Each of these links need to verified for the http code it returns.  Based on the http code returned,  verification of link can be confirmed.