How Often Should You Scan Your Website for Errors?
How often you should scan your website for broken links depends on how actively it changes. Here is a practical guide for different types of websites.
There is no single correct answer — it depends on how actively your website changes and how quickly you want to catch problems. But there are some useful guidelines depending on the type of website you run.
Why frequency matters
Broken links do not appear on a schedule. A page on your own site can break the moment you delete or move content. An external page you link to can disappear at any time — the other website restructures, goes offline, or removes content without warning. The longer a broken link goes unnoticed, the longer your visitors encounter dead ends and the longer search engines crawl pages that lead nowhere.
Scanning once and forgetting about it is not enough. A website that was clean three months ago may have accumulated a dozen broken links since then.
For small websites that change infrequently
If your website is relatively static — a small business site, a portfolio, or a personal site that you update a few times a year — a monthly scan is usually sufficient. The content does not change often, and the main risk is external links breaking on other websites. Once a month catches those within a reasonable timeframe.
For blogs and content-heavy websites
If you publish regularly, scan more frequently — weekly is a sensible default. New content means new links, and new links mean new opportunities for mistakes. A typo in a URL, a link to a page that was just restructured, or an external source that has since gone offline — these appear quickly on active sites. Weekly scanning catches them before they accumulate.
For e-commerce websites
Product pages are added and removed constantly. A link to a product that is no longer available, a category page that was restructured, or a supplier's page that went offline — these have a direct impact on sales. For e-commerce, weekly or even daily scanning is worth considering. A broken link on a product page or in a checkout flow is lost revenue.
For large or enterprise websites
On very large websites with thousands of pages, the sheer volume of content means broken links appear regularly even without any deliberate changes. Frequent automated scanning — daily if possible — combined with alerts when new errors are found is the most practical approach. Waiting for a monthly report on a site that size means problems go unnoticed for too long.
Scanning after changes
Regardless of your regular scan schedule, always run a scan after making significant changes to your website. A redesign, a CMS migration, a URL restructure, or a bulk content update are all high-risk moments for broken links. Running a scan immediately after catches any issues introduced by the changes before visitors encounter them.
Automated vs manual scanning
Manual scanning — remembering to log in and trigger a scan — works but is unreliable. It is easy to forget, especially during busy periods when your website is changing most rapidly. Automated scheduled scanning removes the dependency on memory. dislike404.com scans your website automatically on a schedule and notifies you when new errors are found, so broken links are caught without any manual effort on your part.
A practical starting point
If you are unsure where to start, weekly is a reasonable default for most websites. It is frequent enough to catch problems quickly without generating noise, and it covers both content changes and external link rot. You can always adjust the frequency up or down based on what you find over the first few months.