I made an automated broken links checker and I'd love your feedback

[sph]

Hi,

over the past year I have been working on an automated broken links checker mostly to scratch my own itch, because most offerings available today are quite terrible or overpriced for my target audience. Broken links are a constant issue that has been plaguing all clients I worked for in the past 20 years, so I set out to deal with this problem once and for all.

There are three design goals I have for Bernard:

• Scan websites every day and let me know if anything ever breaks.
• If one day I rename a page, or change its URL, and forget to set up a redirect (thus breaking backlinks) I want to get notified ASAP.
• Do one thing and do it well.

I have been testing it with a select few users during the open beta from January to mid March, but my audience is very technical, while I would love to get more feedback from people with an actual online presence and/or people that live and breathe SEO and marketing.

You can check it out here: https://bernard.app

There is a free plan, and a free demo if you don't even want to sign up. I would love to know what you guys think, advice, feedback and anything you might have. I don't know what are the rules towards self-promotion on this site, so I hope that's OK and it at least helps you track down issues that you were not even aware you had.


Stephane
Founder, bernard.app

 

[Fagin2021]

Hi,

over the past year I have been working on an automated broken links checker mostly to scratch my own itch, because most offerings available today are quite terrible or overpriced for my target audience. Broken links are a constant issue that has been plaguing all clients I worked for in the past 20 years, so I set out to deal with this problem once and for all.

There are three design goals I have for Bernard:

• Scan websites every day and let me know if anything ever breaks.
• If one day I rename a page, or change its URL, and forget to set up a redirect (thus breaking backlinks) I want to get notified ASAP.
• Do one thing and do it well.

I have been testing it with a select few users during the open beta from January to mid March, but my audience is very technical, while I would love to get more feedback from people with an actual online presence and/or people that live and breathe SEO and marketing.

You can check it out here: https://bernard.app

There is a free plan, and a free demo if you don't even want to sign up. I would love to know what you guys think, advice, feedback and anything you might have. I don't know what are the rules towards self-promotion on this site, so I hope that's OK and it at least helps you track down issues that you were not even aware you had.


Stephane
Founder, bernard.app

My instant reaction is that there are dozens of broken link checkers out there - either as part of a broader SEO package or standalone. One of the best known is Screaming Frog, Why does the world need another ?

 

[sph]

My instant reaction is that there are dozens of broken link checkers out there - either as part of a broader SEO package or standalone. One of the best known is Screaming Frog, Why does the world need another ?

It's a good question, and the reason why I built yet another one is:

• Screaming Frog is a standalone tool that runs from your PC, often unautomated. Checking for links once in a blue moon is tantamount to not checking them at all. I wanted something that you set up once and forget it even exists. Every day it makes sure all your links, internal and external, keep working. Bit rot is a real problem on the Internet, so links just break for no reason (or often, because of someone redesigned their entire website and broke all backlinks)
• Screaming Frog runs from your PC and your home network, so not ideal if you have an average connection, or your business website is 100,000 links wide. Bernard runs on an actual datacenter with 10 Gbit connection.
• Also, later I will want to link check not only your HTML, but CSS stylesheets, sitemap, RSS feeds. I do not believe Screaming Frog does that.
• Google Analytics offers a broken links checker tool which... is frankly terrible.
• SEMRush and Ahrefs also offer link checking (just barely better than Google Analytics, but still very very crude), along with the million other tools they offer for 200+/month. Not many businesses spend that much money on SEO, and even if they did, their core business is much wider than link checking, while it is my core competency. Do one thing, and do it well.

Also, I am planning to offer an API to integrate it into larger products. I.e. web agencies offering link checking as a value-add to the CMS framework they sell to their clients. This is a feature that's only interesting to developers and tech companies, but that is something that none of the above products do.

In general, I believe there is space for competition in any field, it only depends on how good your product is. Mine is very young, certainly, but by focusing on that problem alone, I hope to compete on quality, attention to detail and offering a direct relationship with my customers, instead of them having to deal with a large, faceless corporation.

I hope to have answered some of your concerns.

 

[Fagin2021]

In general, I believe there is space for competition in any field, it only depends on how good your product is.

Better...

"In general, I believe there is space for competition in any field, it only depends on how good your marketing is."

 

[fisicx]

I've had a play and there is no filtering.

I have a wordpress website with hundreds of comments many of which link to defunkt website. I really don't care about outbound links, it's the internal links I care about.

One of the broken links was in a comment from 2018!

I'd like to be able to filter for internal links and then inbound links and if I care enough, check the outbound links.

I'd also like to be able to run the test again without having to create an account. After all, it's free so why do you need my details?

I'm not interested in regular updates, an API or anything else. CSS stylesheets, sitemap, RSS feeds and so on are irrelevant. If you have issues with any of these you have a bigger problem than just broken links.

As already suggested, it's not about how good your product, it's how good your marketing.

Get yourself a wordpress plugin and let people integrate with their sites and you will soon have a decent income stream.

 

[fisicx]

I've fixed some internal links and rerun the tool but it's now picking up links that no longer exist. So not really sure how your tool is scanning the site.

I also got sent an email. There is no option to unsubscribe.

And it might be worth changing the URL. The app TLD will confuse many. Especially as it's just a tool. An app is something I install on my phone.

 

[sph]

Thanks for giving it a go, fisicx. My comments below:

I've had a play and there is no filtering.

I have a wordpress website with hundreds of comments many of which link to defunkt website. I really don't care about outbound links, it's the internal links I care about.

One of the broken links was in a comment from 2018!

I'd like to be able to filter for internal links and then inbound links and if I care enough, check the outbound links.

Yes, I hear you. Searching and filtering is being worked on as we speak.

I'd also like to be able to run the test again without having to create an account. After all, it's free so why do you need my details?

Because the demo is just that: a demo. When you sign up we send a report by email whenever we notice new broken links during scans, and I do not want to allow any unauthenticated user to enter an email address. As a forum moderator, you know what pain spammers can be.

The demo is limited also to testing the first 2,500 links, and you can use it only once every 10 days for each given website. The balance between having a useful enough demo, but still not giving everything away for free (this is a business after all), is a delicate one to walk.

I'm not interested in regular updates, an API or anything else. CSS stylesheets, sitemap, RSS feeds and so on are irrelevant. If you have issues with any of these you have a bigger problem than just broken links.

As already suggested, it's not about how good your product, it's how good your marketing.

Get yourself a wordpress plugin and let people integrate with their sites and you will soon have a decent income stream.

Yes, that's planned for later. The API in fact is a step towards being able to create plugins for the most common CMS around, such as Wordpress, etc. But many sites are custom made, hence why a more generic solution was my initial focus.

I've fixed some internal links and rerun the tool but it's now picking up links that no longer exist. So not really sure how your tool is scanning the site.

Care to share these with me? You can reply to the email you've received or use the feedback link in the app and I'll have a look personally.

I also got sent an email. There is no option to unsubscribe.

If you mean the "we have found x issues on your website" email, it's because it is a service email. Unsubscribing from it defeats the purpose of having an automated tool that notifies you whenever something breaks. If one does not want to be bothered when they get a broken link, why even sign up to such a service?

But, I do agree that people hate email without unsubscribing option (me included), even if necessary for the product to do its thing. I am still trying to figure out the balance here. Running daily scan on websites cost time and resources, of course, so it defeats the purpose to scan websites without being able to tell the user about any issue that might arise.

In any case, I appreciate the feedback and the time you have taken to try the app out. This is still a very new product (launched in January), there is a LOT of things to improve, iron out so it can better fill the niche of a set and forget kind of automated website monitor.

 

[fisicx]

Once I’ve fixed all the broken links I won’t need to use the tool again for many months.

Broken links are far less of an SEO issue that you think. The important links are internal. External links can be ignored. Inbound links don’t seem to be checked by your tool.

All of which means for most sites you only need to run the link checked every now and then.

Which means I’m never going to pay you for the service.

The number of custom built sites is tiny compared to Wordpress. I’d put all my focus into building a plugin. It will be far simpler to market and monetise.

I’ve turned off the schedule in the tool. I’ve run the check, fixed the links so no longer need to worry. Give people the option to unsubscribe (it’s a legal requirement). If they are paying and choose not to be informed that’s their choice.

I’ll run a test again later today and see if it’s still finding pages and links that no longer exist.

 

[sph]

Once I’ve fixed all the broken links I won’t need to use the tool again for many months.

Broken links are far less of an SEO issue that you think. The important links are internal. External links can be ignored. Inbound links don’t seem to be checked by your tool.

True, but many do not want broken links, either internal or external, not only for SEO reasons. One of my paying customers write and serves technical documents for their clients, and you want all links (and images, etc.) to always work. It is a major hit to productivity when you're reading documentation, there's an outbound link that promises the answer you need, and all you get is a 404 error.

In my case, I created this tool for my blog: I just want that my readers can follow along, even years later, when some links have evaporated into thin air, as its often the case when you read a blog post from more than 5 years ago. SEO is not my concern here either, apart from making sure I do not break any backlinks if I update my blog.

All of which means for most sites you only need to run the link checked every now and then.

The number of custom built sites is tiny compared to Wordpress. I’d put all my focus into building a plugin. It will be far simpler to market.

This is true. I guess my initial user base is at the moment mainly composed of tech companies (90% of my users are US-based), where Wordpress and other frameworks are very rarely used. This target demographic wants their website to always be up-to-date, and plenty of money to spend make sure that's the case.

Users that only need links checked once in a blue moon can use the free plan or any of the other free tools available on the internet, thus it is very hard to monetise them.

I’ve turned off the schedule in the tool. I’ve run the check, fixed the links so no longer need to worry. Give people the option to unsubscribe (it’s a legal requirement). If they are paying and choose not to be informed that’s their choice.

I'll look into that.

 

[antropy]

Looks interesting acutally, I'll ask my marketing chaps to take a look!

Paul.

 

[fisicx]

All of which comes back to marketing.

Identify your target user and focus on their needs. No point in trying to promote the product to a builder in Dudley when they aren’t going to pay.

But Wordpress is a ready source of passive income. Give an away a freebie with an upgrade option and money will come rolling in. It’s earned me tens of thousands over the years without having to lift a finger.

 

[fantheflames]

I've signed up and tested a site. I think it's really helpful but I'd like to have more features, personally, as if I don't get more value from it, I end up not using it again or forgetting about it. I use Screamingfrog because it gives me a lot of value. It might not have everything I need to make updates to my website, but I always go back to it. Worth a thought, otherwise it's really great.

 

[rsshep]

You may have already mentioned this, but if I missed it, apologies, but I'm thinking this could work well in marketing and SEO agencies who likely have a need to monitor multiples sites across all of their clients. I can imagine if you've got 50-100 sites you're looking after, having something that'll let know know about broken links automatically would be handy.

However, I have no idea if there's already a product on the market that does this, or how much value it would provide to those agencies.

 

[jeremielondon]

Hi @sph,

I already love your tool, i was using drlinkcheck but your UI is friendlier and your prices too. I will test it for one or two month and see how it goes for me.
But so far, i'm already really happy with it.

Many thanks,