Broken Link Checker

How well this listing is tuned to rank in WordPress.org search, on the factors an owner controls. Not popularity, optimization.

Directory searches this plugin turns up in, and which way each one is moving. WordPress.org publishes no history of search positions, so this starts the day we first tracked a keyword and never backfills.

wp.org is where the directory puts the plugin for that search. On merit is where it would sit if results were ranked on rating, support and updates, without the install boost. The last column is how far the wp.org position moved, from our first reading in the last 90 days to the latest.

882 searches this plugin appeared in over the last 90 days, 20 listed. 713 left out as unrelated or noise (years, numbers, stray words).

Directory rank vs rivals

wp.org popularity rank over time · higher is better · when a rival's line climbs above yours, they've overtaken you

How often this plugin actually ships. A steady rhythm is the maintenance signal a single "last updated" date can't show.

Share of active installs on each version of this plugin · 81% run the current release. Green is the current release; a big slice on older versions is a user base that has stopped updating.

Crossed into this band 9 months ago; the previous band took 24 months to cross, which places it about 61% of the way through.

1. ★★★★★ mariodegan

   4mo ago

   Buon Plugin non invasivo e rapido abbastanza facile da usare

   Read on wp.org ↗
2. ★★★★★ Ferny

   4mo ago

   BLC found many broken links for me. I thought they were wrong but doing my due diligence I found BLC was correct. I wouldn’t have found them without this tool. I see some comments that this tool was giving inaccurate results. I thought the same until I really looked into it and they were right every time. Thanks BLC. This topic was modified 1 week, 2 days ago by Ferny. Reason: just did a quick check but didn't change anything

   Read on wp.org ↗
3. ★★★★★ rscarter1

   4mo ago

   This plugin caught small error that was prepending a space after every single URL in my directory. I had no idea! Thank you!

   Read on wp.org ↗
4. ★★★★★ dg28com

   4mo ago

   I have a large number of links on my website and it gives me great peace of mind to know that they are checked regularly and that any issues are reported to me. A great service.

   Read on wp.org ↗
5. ★★★★★ anotheruser7

   4mo ago

   The local version finds hundreds of false positives, so I switched to the cloud version, but it doesn’t find anything, even though I know there are broken links in my woocommerce product pages. The “full report” doesn’t specify which urls were scanned, so i assume it’s not actually scanning everything on my site, i have blog posts, pages, and woocommerce products. In the local settings, it was possible to setup what we wanted to get scanned, but that doesnt seem possible with the cloud version. Gave up and deleted the plugin.

   Read on wp.org ↗
6. ★★★★★ smileee2

   8mo ago

   I have used this plugin for years and it’s always been problematic, but now it gives every single link a false positive and then I have to manually check and dismiss each one. If I bulk rescan all of them again, then they all turn green and unbroken (for no valid reason), but if I click anything after that, it goes right back to being broken (but aren’t actually broken) and I have to start all over or just ignore all the broken links, which is hard to do. This is one of the worst plugins I’ve used. It doesn’t even do it’s job partially right. I thought the cloud version would be better, but it’s not….not even a little bit.

   Read on wp.org ↗
7. ★★★★★ slavomir12

   8mo ago

   Thank you very much your work developers. I am very grateful for your wok and for your helpful plugin <3. I was migrating from my old CMS to WordPress and on my WordPress Localhost PC I successfully and conveniently fixed broken links, of which there were hundreds. I am most grateful for the integration with web.archive.org. This saved me many days of manual work

   Read on wp.org ↗
8. ★★★★★ timmitra

   9mo ago

   I’ve been using this plugin on 3 of my main sites for several years. It reports too many false positives when it encounters a crawler violation when checking the URLs. I have NEVER been able to connect to the Cloud version either by manual or automatic connection. I can login to “The Hub” but can’t connect from The Hub or connect from the plugin on my sites.It is useful at finding broken links, but lately 90% of the reported links are not broken. The remote websites report “Forbidden” which is NOT broken. They just don’t like the method this crawler is using. This topic was modified 5 months, 1 week ago by timmitra.

   Read on wp.org ↗

Recent releases and news for this plugin

1. — Version 2.4.8 Fix: Patched a vulnerability issue. 2.4.8
2. — Version 2.4.7 Fix: Removed Edit and Unlink Banner actions from the Local Scanner page. Fix: Updated webhook parse_request handler to use add_action instead of add_filter. Fix: Prevented broken links from being highlighted for non-logg 2.4.7
3. — Version 2.4.6 Fix: Patched a vulnerability issue. 2.4.6
4. — Version 2.4.5 Fix: Patched a vulnerability issue. 2.4.5
5. — Version 2.4.4 Fix: Resolved issue where editing a link would get stuck in the Hub. Fix: Updated the Hub link to correctly point to the BLC page within the Hub. 2.4.4
6. — Version 2.4.3 Enhance: PHP 8.4 compatibility. Enhance: Compatibility with WordPress 6.8. Enhance: Add a new menu item to help you discover other free plugins by WPMU DEV and more 2.4.3

All 17 disclosed vulnerabilities are patched in the current version (2.4.15). Sites still on an older version should update.

1. Patched Medium · 6.5 Broken Link Checker <= 2.4.14.1 - Unauthenticated Arbitrary Shortcode Execution via parser_callback ↗
   2026-10-15 CVE-2026-96562 Improper Control of Generation of Code Affects <= 2.4.14.1 Patched in 2.4.15
2. Patched Medium · 5.3 Broken Link Checker <= 2.4.14.1 - Unauthenticated Arbitrary HTML Attribute Injection ↗
   2026-10-13 CVE-2026-102389 Improper Input Validation Affects <= 2.4.14.1 Patched in 2.4.15
3. Patched Medium · 5.5 Broken Link Checker <= 2.4.14 - Authenticated (Editor+) Server-Side Request Forgery ↗
   2026-09-02 CVE-2026-84772 Server-Side Request Forgery Affects <= 2.4.14 Patched in 2.4.14.1
4. Patched High · 7.2 Broken Link Checker <= 2.4.13 - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Comment Author URL / Link Log ↗
   2026-09-01 CVE-2026-75528 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation Affects <= 2.4.13 Patched in 2.4.13.1
5. Patched Critical · 9.8 Broken Link Checker < 2.4.12 - Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution ↗
   2026-08-21 CVE-2026-18937 Improper Control of Generation of Code Affects < 2.4.12 Patched in 2.4.12
6. Patched Medium · 4.9 Broken Link Checker <= 2.4.7 - Authenticated (Editor+) SQL Injection ↗
   2026-03-26 CVE-2026-39466 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command Affects <= 2.4.7 Patched in 2.4.8
7. Patched Medium · 4.3 Broken Link Checker <= 2.4.4 - Missing Autorization to Authenticated (Subscriber+) Plugin Status Dashboard View ↗
   2025-06-02 CVE-2025-4047 Missing Authorization Affects <= 2.4.4 Patched in 2.4.5
8. Patched Medium · 5.5 Broken Link Checker <= 2.4.1 - Authenticated (Admin+) Server-Side Request Forgery ↗
   2024-12-05 CVE-2024-10903 Server-Side Request Forgery Affects <= 2.4.1 Patched in 2.4.2
9. Patched High · 7.1 Broken Link Checker <= 2.4.0 - Reflected Cross-Site Scripting ↗
   2024-09-30 CVE-2024-8981 Improper Neutralization of Script-Related HTML Tags in a Web Page Affects <= 2.4.0 Patched in 2.4.1
10. Patched Medium · 4.4 Broken Link Checker <= 2.2.3 - Authenticated (Administrator+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting via settings ↗
    2024-02-12 CVE-2024-25592 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation Affects <= 2.2.3 Patched in 2.2.4
11. Patched Medium · 5.5 Broken Link Checker <= 1.11.19 - Authenticated (Administrator+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting ↗
    2022-11-11 CVE-2022-3922 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation Affects <= 1.11.19 Patched in 1.11.20
12. Patched High · 7.2 Broken Link Checker <= 1.11.16 - Authenticated (Admin+) PHAR Deserialization ↗
    2022-07-18 CVE-2022-2438 Deserialization of Untrusted Data Affects <= 1.11.16 Patched in 1.11.17
13. Patched Medium · 6.1 Broken Link Checker <= 1.11.8 - Reflected Cross-Site Scripting ↗
    2019-10-15 CVE-2019-16521 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation Affects < 1.11.9 Patched in 1.11.9
14. Patched Medium · 5.4 Broken Link Checker <= 1.11.8 - Reflected Cross-Site Scripting ↗
    2019-10-14 CVE-2019-17207 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation Affects < 1.11.9 Patched in 1.11.9
15. Patched Medium · 6.1 Broken Link Checker <= 1.10.8 - Cross-Site Scripting ↗
    2015-06-29 CVE-2015-5057 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation Affects < 1.10.9 Patched in 1.10.9
16. Patched Medium · 5.3 Broken Link Checker < 1.10.6 - Reflected Cross Site Scripting ↗
    2015-04-20 CVE-2015-10098 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation Affects < 1.10.6 Patched in 1.10.6
17. Patched Medium · 5.5 Broken Link Checker < 1.10.2 - Authenticated (Admin+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting ↗
    2014-12-05 CVE-2014-125105 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation Affects < 1.10.2 Patched in 1.10.2

Translated into 74 languages, 12 at 90% or more

Plus 50 more locales with partial translations.

Whether ChatGPT and Claude name this plugin when asked the category question, and whether the readme gives them something to quote.

Not measured yet for this plugin’s topics. Its tracked searches are not among the measured topics. See the topics measured so far.

Growth timeline

Install-tier crossings we have observed, and how long each tier took to outgrow

1. 2026-01-29 600K+ → 500K+ down after 712 days in tier
2. 2024-02-17 700K+ → 600K+ down after 6 days in tier
3. 2024-02-11 600K+ → 700K+ up after 2 days in tier
4. 2024-02-09 700K+ → 600K+ down after 2 days in tier
5. 2024-02-07 600K+ → 700K+ up after 10 days in tier
6. 2024-01-28 700K+ → 600K+ down after 1730 days in tier
7. 2019-05-04 600K+ → 700K+ up after 398 days in tier
8. 2018-04-01 500K+ → 600K+ up after 453 days in tier

Competes with

The plugins that solve the same job, ranked by shared tags then reach, closest match first. The letter on the right is each plugin's health grade (A best, F worst).

Embed this report card

Drop a live Pulse card for Broken Link Checker into a readme, a review or a deck. It updates itself.

Broken Link Checker: 500K+ active installs, 3.8★ (605 reviews). Plugin Pulse (WP Mayor), as of 2026-11-01. https://plugins.wpmayor.com/plugin/broken-link-checker