Find broken images on your site

SiteCurl checks every image tag on your pages and verifies the source URL returns a working response. Images that return a 404, 500, or connection error are flagged. The check covers standard img tags, picture elements, and background images referenced in inline styles.

For each broken image, SiteCurl reports the source page, the image URL, and the HTTP status code. You see exactly which images are broken and on which pages they appear.

On a full scan of 50 pages, this can cover hundreds of images. Results are grouped by page so you can work through fixes one page at a time.

Broken images are quieter than broken links. A broken link shows a 404 page. A broken image shows nothing, or a tiny icon that most visitors scroll past. But the damage is real. A product page with a missing hero image looks abandoned. A blog post with broken screenshots loses its teaching value. A homepage with a missing logo looks like a site under construction.

The causes are predictable. Someone uploads an image, then later renames the file or moves it to a different folder. A CDN URL changes after a hosting migration. An image hotlinked from another site disappears when that site removes it. A CMS plugin generates thumbnail URLs that break when the plugin is updated or removed.

The problem compounds over time. A site with two years of blog posts can accumulate dozens of broken images without anyone noticing. Each one degrades the page it sits on. Visitors who land on a page with broken images assume the content is outdated, even if the text is still accurate.

Broken images make your site look neglected. Visitors judge trust in seconds. A page with a missing product photo or a broken logo does not inspire trust. If the first image a visitor sees is broken, they question whether the rest of the site works.

Search engines index images separately through image search. A broken image URL wastes that index slot. If Google crawls an image and gets a 404, it removes that image from search results. You lose a traffic source you may not have known you had.

On e-commerce sites, broken product images directly cost sales. A shopper who cannot see the product will not buy it. On portfolio sites, broken images destroy the entire purpose of the page.

E-commerce sites with large product catalogs are hit hardest. Products get removed, images get reorganized, and CDN URLs change. Each broken product image is a listing that cannot convert.

Bloggers and content sites accumulate broken images over time as hosting changes, plugins update, and external image sources disappear. Older posts with broken screenshots lose their value.

Agencies managing client sites need to catch broken images before the client does. A monthly scan across all client sites prevents the awkward call about a homepage with a missing banner.

Step 1: Check if the image file still exists. Open the broken image URL directly in your browser. If it returns a 404, the file was deleted or moved. Search your media library or file system for the filename to find its new location.

Step 2: Re-upload missing images. If the original file is gone, upload a replacement. Use the same filename and path if possible so other pages referencing the same image are fixed at the same time.

Step 3: Update image paths after migrations. If you moved to a new host or CDN, old image URLs may no longer work. Do a search-and-replace across your content for the old domain or path prefix and update it to the new one.

Step 4: Stop hotlinking external images. If you reference images hosted on other sites, those images can disappear at any time. Download the images (if you have rights to use them) and host them on your own server.

Step 5: Add alt text while you fix. While updating broken images, add descriptive alt text to every image you touch. This helps accessibility and gives search engines text to index alongside the image.

Fixing one reference but missing others. The same broken image may appear on multiple pages. Search your CMS or codebase for the image URL and fix every reference, not just the one SiteCurl flagged.

Using relative paths inconsistently. Mixing /images/photo.jpg and images/photo.jpg works differently depending on the page URL. Use consistent paths, ideally starting from the site root.

Ignoring CMS-generated thumbnails. Your original image may exist, but the CMS-generated thumbnail (like WordPress's -300x200 variant) may be missing. Regenerate thumbnails after any media library cleanup.

After fixing, run another SiteCurl scan on the same pages. The broken image count should drop to zero. For a quick manual check, open the page in your browser and look for missing images. In Chrome, open DevTools (F12), go to the Console tab, and look for 404 errors on image URLs.

You can also check individual image URLs with curl -sI https://yoursite.com/image.jpg and confirm the status is HTTP 200.

Broken images are invisible to site owners but obvious to visitors. They make your site look neglected and cost you traffic from image search. Fix missing images, stop hotlinking, and run regular scans to catch new breaks before visitors do.