Can You Be Penalized in Search Engines For Broken Web Links?

Jul 24, 2008 - 8:05 am 1 by

A Google Groups thread has discussion around a site that was hacked and because of it, now has many broken (dead) hyper links. The question then came up, would Google penalize a site that had broken links?

The simple answer is no, you generally will not be hurt by broken links. Googler, JohnMu said, "In general those broken links will not negatively affect your site's crawling, indexing and ranking."

But it really depends on many variables. In general, if you have a small number of broken links on your site, it should make no difference in your rankings at Google or any other search engine. However, if your site navigation and linking structure is in complete disarray, then you can expect your site to have major issues ranking well for your content. Does this mean your site will be "penalized?" No, not at all. But it does mean the search engines will have a rough time crawling your site and understanding your content.

Ben covered this topic back in 2005 under the title Do Search Engine Penalize for Dead Links? Yes, it still makes for a good read.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 18, 2025

Jul 18, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google June Core Update Done, Local Ranking Update, AI Mode Updates & AI Calling Businesses

Jul 18, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Maps

New Google Business Profile Check Edit Status

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: Login Service Pages Are Hard To Rank In Search

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google AI Overviews For Movie Queries

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Rolling Out Smart Bidding Exploration To Some Advertisers

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Google Sitemaps URLs Have "High Response Time" Message