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Reviewing your results

After a scan, every finding appears in two views. Each is built from your pages' real rendered output - the links and images that actually shipped to visitors, not a list read out of your database.

The two views​

  • By URL - every unique link, image and resource found across your site, each with a single verdict and a count of how many pages use it. This is the fastest way to fix a broken link once and clear it everywhere it appears.
  • By page - every scanned page, with its own Issues, Warnings and Notices counts. This is the way to work page by page, or to find the pages in the worst shape.

The dashboard with the scan summary and the By URL results

The By page view listing every scanned page with its counts

A summary across the top of both views shows how many URLs were checked, the Issues, Warnings and Notices totals, and the last scan time. Both views are sorted worst-first by default; you can still sort by any column.

The verdicts​

Findings are split by severity, so advisory items are never counted as problems:

  • Issues (critical) - a broken link or image: a 404 or other error, a host that cannot be reached, or (on Premium) a destination flagged as a soft error or by Safe Browsing.
  • Warnings - worth fixing but not broken: an SSL or certificate problem, a permanent redirect (the link still works but points at an old address), mixed content (an image, embed or page resource loading over plain HTTP on your HTTPS site), or a host that is blocked, not broken.
  • Notices - advisory: a temporary redirect, for example.
  • OK - the link or image resolved cleanly.

Blocked, not broken is an important distinction: some hosts (for example sites behind Cloudflare) challenge automated requests. The plugin tells these apart from genuine failures so you are not chasing false positives. On Premium you can set the browser user-agent to reduce how often this happens.

Finding details​

Click any finding - a row in either view, or a count badge - to open its details.

Finding details showing where a broken URL appears and the quick actions

It shows:

  • Where it appears. For a broken URL, the list of pages that use it, so you know the full blast radius of a single fix.
  • The evidence. The verdict in plain terms (for example "404 Not Found", "SSL certificate expired", or "redirects to ...") taken from the actual response.
  • Quick actions:
    • View page - opens the live page in a new tab.
    • Edit page - jumps to the WordPress editor for that page.
    • View source - re-renders the page and highlights the exact link or image in context, so you can see precisely where it lives (see below).
    • View archived copy - on broken external links only: opens the Wayback Machine's snapshots of the dead URL in a new tab, so you can see what the page used to say or pick a snapshot to link instead. It is just a link - nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is rewritten.
    • Ignore - stops a URL counting while leaving it visible; reverse it any time from the Ignored view.

On the By page view, every row - including archive pages like tag or date archives - also offers Re-scan and Exclude directly from the row, without opening a scan of the whole site: Re-scan checks just that one page's links and images again, and Exclude removes the page from scanning right away.

View source​

The single most useful tool for tracking down a mystery link is View source. It re-renders the page and highlights the offending link or image right where it appears in the HTML - so you can tell instantly whether it came from your content, a widget, the theme, or a page builder block.

The page source with the broken reference highlighted in context

Mixed content​

On an HTTPS site, anything that loads as part of the page - images, embeds, stylesheets, scripts, fonts - must also load over HTTPS. A reference that still uses plain http:// is mixed content: browsers block or downgrade it, so the image can vanish or the style can break even though the file itself is fine. The audit flags these as warnings, with the fix spelled out on the finding: serve the same file over https://.

Plain links (an <a> pointing at an http:// address) are not mixed content - clicking one is a normal navigation - so they are not flagged. And on a site that is not served over HTTPS, this check does not apply at all.

URL parameters​

Cache-busters and tracking tags (like ver, utm_source and fbclid) make the same file look like many different URLs. The plugin ignores a built-in list of these so your counts stay stable and each real resource is checked once. You can add your own on the Settings screen.

On Premium, the URL Parameter Learning Engine watches the parameters that flow through your scans and suggests new ones worth ignoring - each with evidence, a live example you can open both ways, and a one-click "add". See Plans and premium features.

The URL Parameter Learning Engine suggesting parameters with evidence, a live example and one-click add (Premium)

The Images view (Premium)​

On Premium, the audit also looks at every image's alternative text - the description screen readers announce and search engines read when an image cannot be seen. The Images view lists every image the scan found, one row per image, with its finding.

The Images view listing each image with its alternative text and a WCAG-anchored finding, with warning and review tiers (Premium)

Findings split into two tiers:

  • Warnings - the alt text is missing, is only whitespace, or the image has no alt but does have a title (which most assistive technology never announces). These are clear-cut: an accessible name is either present or it is not.
  • Review notices - something worth a human look, not a rule violation: an empty alt where the image's stored alt text is also empty (it looks forgotten rather than chosen), an empty alt alongside a conflicting aria-label, alt text that reads like a filename or a generic placeholder, or alt text that runs unusually long. These are signals, not verdicts - the audit never tells you an image "fails" anything on a review notice; it asks you to take a look and decide.

Images that are correctly marked decorative (an empty alt on a purely decorative image), or that already have an accessible name from an aria-label or aria-labelledby, are never flagged.

Each finding shows the page it appears on and a plain-English explanation. From there you can jump to View source to see the image in context, or Ignore it. An ignored image finding stops counting and moves off the Images view to the Ignored view, alongside everything else you have silenced - one screen shows the lot, and you can un-ignore any of them from there at any time.

The By page view's Findings card also shows the alt-text Warnings and Notices counts for that page, alongside its other findings.

Changes, filters and export (Premium)​

Paid plans add more ways to work through results:

  • Change detection - after each scan, a summary shows what newly broke, what changed, and what was fixed since the last scan.
  • One-click filters and CSV export - narrow the results to a specific issue type and export any view.
  • Scheduled scans and email reports - run scans automatically and get the results, with the changes digest, by email.

The free plugin shows everything in the two views and the finding details.