What causes broken images?

Common causes include deleted files, typos in the image path, expired CDN links, and hotlinking to images on other servers that have been removed.

How do I find broken images on my site?

Run a SiteCurl scan and check the technical health section. The broken images check sends a request to each image URL and flags any that return errors or time out.

Do broken images hurt SEO?

Broken images themselves are not a direct ranking factor, but they degrade user experience and increase bounce rate, which can indirectly hurt your search performance.

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How to Fix Broken Images on Your Website

technical health Mar 2, 2026 2 min read

What the broken images check tests

SiteCurl requests each image URL on your page and checks whether it returns a successful response (HTTP 200-399). Images that return 404, 500, or time out are flagged as broken. Up to 10 images per page are checked within a 4-second budget.

Why it matters

A broken image shows a generic placeholder icon instead of your content. Visitors notice immediately, and it signals that the site is poorly maintained. Product pages with broken images lose sales. Blog posts with missing screenshots lose trust.

Beyond appearance, broken images waste bandwidth. The browser still tries to load them, adding failed requests that slow everything else down.

How to fix it

Check the image path

The most common cause is a wrong file path. Open your browser’s developer tools (right-click the broken image, Inspect), and look at the src attribute. Verify the file exists at that path on your server.

<!-- Wrong: typo in filename -->
<img src="/images/hedr-photo.jpg" alt="Header photo">

<!-- Fixed -->
<img src="/images/header-photo.jpg" alt="Header photo">

Fix CDN or external URLs

If images are hosted on a CDN or external service, check that the URLs are still valid. CDN links can expire, and third-party services may remove images without notice.

Upload missing files

If the image file was deleted, re-upload it. If you no longer need the image, remove the <img> tag entirely rather than leaving a broken reference.

Use a fallback

For user-generated content where images may break, add an onerror handler:

<img src="/uploads/user-photo.jpg" alt="User photo"
     onerror="this.src='/images/placeholder.png'">

How to verify the fix

After fixing the image paths, reload the page and confirm all images display correctly. Run a SiteCurl scan and check that the broken images finding now passes.

Broken images often appear alongside broken links. If your images break because of URL structure problems, also check your URL structure findings.

Start a free trial to scan your site for broken images.