External Link Checker

List every outbound link on your website — which domains you link to, from which pages, with which anchor text and rel attributes. Paste your domain and CrawlHawk delivers the complete external-link inventory as a downloadable dataset. 500 URLs free, no signup, no subscription.

Why External Links Need Auditing

Your outbound links say something about your site: search engines read them as editorial signals, regulators and ad networks read them as disclosures, and visitors follow them on your reputation. Yet on most sites nobody actually knows what the site links out to — years of blog posts, guest content, old partners and expired resources accumulate into an outbound-link surface no one has ever reviewed. An external link audit answers: where does my site send people, and is every one of those links something I still stand behind?

How the External Link Checker Works

Enter your domain above and CrawlHawk crawls every reachable page, recording each link pointing to another domain with its source page, target URL, anchor text and rel attributes (nofollow, sponsored, ugc, noopener). Sort the export by target domain to see exactly which external sites you link to most — often the fastest route to surprises.

What an External Link Audit Catches

Dead outbound links: external pages disappear constantly; links to them frustrate readers and signal stale content (pair with the Broken Link Checker for status codes). Compliance gaps: paid and affiliate links must carry rel="sponsored" — the report shows every external link's rel attributes, so unlabelled paid links stand out. Brand-safety risks: domains that changed hands since you linked to them — an expired domain you linked in 2019 may host something very different today. Injected links: hacked pages often carry spam links to external sites; a full outbound inventory is one of the simplest ways to spot them. Link-equity leaks: excessive followed links to low-value targets.

Sorting by Domain: the 10-Minute Audit

The fastest workflow: export to CSV, pivot by target domain, and scan the list top to bottom. Recognise every domain? Good. See a domain you can't place, a pharmacy site, or a casino? That row's source-page column tells you exactly which of your pages carries the link. Ten minutes with the pivot table typically covers 95% of the risk on a mid-sized site.

Export and Pricing

Download the outbound-link inventory as CSV or Excel for pivot-table review, JSON for pipelines, or HTML/PDF for reporting. The free tier covers 500 URLs per crawl with no credit card; credit packs are pay-once and credits never expire — one credit per URL crawled. See Pricing for current rates.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I find all external links on my website?

Enter your domain in the checker above and run a full-domain crawl. Every link pointing to another domain is reported with its source page, target URL, anchor text and rel attributes — the full outbound inventory in one table.

Do external links affect SEO?

Yes. Relevant, credible outbound links are a normal part of good content; links to broken, spammy or penalised targets hurt trust, and unlabelled paid links violate search-engine guidelines. The audit shows what you're actually linking to so you can decide what stays.

Is this external link checker free?

Yes, up to 500 URLs per crawl, with no signup and no credit card. Larger sites use pay-once credit packs; credits never expire.

What's the difference between nofollow, sponsored and ugc?

All three tell search engines to treat the link specially: rel="sponsored" marks paid links, rel="ugc" marks user-generated content (comments, forum posts), and rel="nofollow" is the generic hint. The report shows every external link's attributes, so mislabelled or unlabelled paid links are easy to isolate.

Can it detect links added by hackers?

It reports every external link that exists on your pages — including injected spam links, which typically point to domains you've never heard of. Sorting the export by target domain makes them stand out; investigating and removing them is then a targeted fix on the identified source pages.

Should external links open in a new tab?

That's a UX preference, not an SEO factor — but if you use target="_blank", pair it with rel="noopener" for security. The report includes noopener in the attribute data, so you can find external links missing it.

Start crawling — 500 URLs free, no credit card required →