Pathfinder Link Repair vs VLink Broken Links Scout

Pathfinder Link Repair is the only WordPress plugin that doesn’t just find broken links — it fixes them intelligently. Most broken link plugins stop at detection. They hand you a list of dead URLs and leave you to figure out the rest. Pathfinder Link Repair goes further. Its built-in AI engine, Pathfinder, analyzes the context around every broken link — the anchor text, the surrounding paragraph, the page it lives on — and suggests the best replacement URLs from within your own site. One click and the link is fixed. No broken link should stay broken. Pathfinder makes sure of it. Why Broken Links Hurt You Every broken link on your site is a problem: SEO damage — Search engines crawl broken links and penalize sites that have too many. Every 404 is a signal that your site is poorly maintained. Lost visitors — A user who clicks a broken link and hits a 404 page is a user who leaves. They rarely come back. Damaged credibility — Broken links make your site look abandoned, especially on cornerstone content that readers trust. Wasted link equity — Internal links pass SEO value between your pages. A broken internal link is wasted ranking potential. Fixing broken links manually is tedious. Finding the right replacement for each one is even harder. Pathfinder Link Repair automates both. How It Works Step 1 — Scan Click Scan Now in your dashboard. The plugin crawls every published post and page on your site, extracts every link, and checks each one for broken status (404, 410, 500, timeout). Results appear in your dashboard organized by status. Step 2 — Ask Pathfinder Click “Ask Pathfinder” next to any broken link. Pathfinder AI analyzes the context of the broken link — what the anchor text says, what the surrounding paragraph is about, what page it lives on — and searches your site for the best replacement. Within seconds you see up to three suggestions, each with a confidence score and a plain-English explanation of why it’s a good match. Step 3 — Fix Click Fix next to your preferred suggestion. The broken URL is replaced in your post content instantly. Optionally, a 301 redirect is created so any external sites linking to the old URL are seamlessly redirected to the new one. That’s it. No technical knowledge required. Key Features 🔍 Intelligent Link Scanner * Scans all posts, pages, and custom post types * Detects broken links returning 404, 410, 500 errors and timeouts * Captures anchor text and surrounding context for every link * Excludes domains and URLs you specify in settings * Permanent Allowlist — add URLs or domains that should never be flagged * Tracks when each broken link was first found * Re-scans automatically on post save 🧭 Pathfinder AI Engine * Analyzes anchor text, surrounding paragraph, and page context * Searches your site for semantically relevant replacement candidates * Ranks suggestions by confidence score (0–100%) * Provides plain-English reasoning for every suggestion * Falls back to recent content when context is ambiguous * Powered by Claude Haiku — fast, accurate, cost-effective ⚡ One-Click Fixing * Replaces broken URLs directly in post content * No manual editing of posts required * Optional automatic 301 redirect creation on fix * Complete audit trail — every fix logged with before/after URLs 📋 Fix Log * Paginated history of every fix ever applied * Shows original URL, replacement URL, date, who fixed it * Indicates whether a 301 redirect was created * Exportable as CSV for reporting or client handoff 🔀 Redirect Manager * Create and manage 301 redirects directly from WordPress * Add redirects manually or automatically on link fix * Tracks hit count for every redirect * No need for a separate redirect plugin 🗓️ Scheduled Scanning * Set scans to run daily, weekly, or monthly automatically * Runs silently in the background via WordPress cron * Never manually click Scan Now again * Shows next scheduled scan time in settings 🛡️ Privacy and Security * Your Anthropic API key is stored server-side only — never exposed to users or the browser * All database queries use prepared statements * All AJAX handlers verified with nonces and capability checks * All output properly escaped * Full uninstall cleanup — no orphaned data left behind Who Is This For? Content-heavy sites — Blogs, news sites, and magazines with hundreds of posts accumulate broken links over time as external URLs change and internal content gets reorganized. Pathfinder Link Repair keeps your link profile clean automatically. SEO-focused site owners — Broken links are a known negative SEO signal. Cleaning them up is one of the fastest wins available in technical SEO. Pathfinder makes it fast enough to do regularly. WordPress developers — Building sites for clients who need to maintain link health over time. Install once, configure, and hand off a self-maintaining plugin that doesn’t require technical knowledge to operate. E-commerce stores — Product pages, blog content, and category pages all accumulate broken links as products are discontinued and URLs change. Broken links in product descriptions and buying guides hurt conversion rates. Privacy Policy Pathfinder Link Repair sends link context data (broken URL, anchor text, surrounding paragraph text, and candidate replacement URLs from your site) to the Anthropic API for processing by the Pathfinder AI engine. No personally identifiable information is included in these requests. No data is stored by Anthropic beyond the duration of the API request. The plugin does not collect, store, or transmit any visitor data. All data stored by the plugin (broken links, suggestions, fix log, redirects) lives entirely in your WordPress database. See the External services section below for full details on what is sent to the Anthropic API and when. External services This plugin connects to the Anthropic API to generate AI-powered replacement-URL suggestions for broken links. It is the only external service the plugin uses. What the service is The Anthropic API is a third-party AI service operated by Anthropic, PBC. Pathfinder Link Repair uses it to run the Claude Haiku language model, which ranks candidate replacement URLs from your own site and explains why each is a good match. What data is sent and when Data is only sent to the Anthropic API when a logged-in administrator clicks the Ask Pathfinder button (or runs the equivalent bulk action) for a specific broken link. No data is sent during normal scanning, on the front end, or in the background. For each request, the plugin sends: The broken URL (e.g. https://example.com/old-page) The anchor text of the broken link A short snippet of surrounding paragraph text from the post where the link appears The title of the post the broken link was found on A list of up to ~8 candidate replacement URLs from your own site, with their titles and short excerpts The Anthropic API key you configured in Broken Links → Settings The plugin does not send visitor data, post content beyond the snippet around the broken link, user account information, login credentials, or any other personal data. Requests are sent to: https://api.anthropic.com/v1/messages Anthropic’s terms and policies By configuring an Anthropic API key and using the Ask Pathfinder feature, you are bound by Anthropic’s terms of use and privacy policy: Terms of Service: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms Privacy Policy: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy If you do not configure an Anthropic API key, no data is ever sent to the Anthropic API and the plugin’s scanning, allowlist, redirect, and fix-log features all continue to work normally.

Find every broken or redirecting internal link in your WordPress content, and fix them in bulk. VLink Broken Links Scout reads your content straight from the database, so the front-end never gets crawled and visitors are never slowed down. Every fix is preceded by a one-click-restorable snapshot, so you can replace links across hundreds of posts without fearing a typo. How it works Scan your content for internal links. Check each URL with a real HTTP request and classify the response. Fix broken URLs and permanent redirects (301 / 308) one at a time or in bulk. What gets flagged Broken: 404 Not Found, 410 Gone. Safe to auto-replace: 301 Moved Permanently, 308 Permanent Redirect. Informational only: 302 / 303 / 307 (the original URL is still authoritative, so the plugin will not auto-replace them). How you fix things One link at a time: open the Change Link modal, see the suggested target, replace across every post that uses it. In bulk: filter by status, preview the diff, then apply. Always reversible: every fix creates a snapshot you can restore in one click. Audit trail: every change is logged with old URL, new URL, posts touched, user, and timestamp. Built for safety Snapshot before every change. Restore is one click away. Background work runs in small bounded batches with retry on timeout, so visitor requests are never blocked. Optional scheduled scan with a clean HTML email summary. RFC 3986 and RFC 9110 compliant URL handling, so http vs https, www vs non-www, and trailing slash variants are all matched correctly. Privacy The plugin does not collect, store, or transmit personal data about visitors or administrators. No third-party API calls. No telemetry. No analytics. No call-home. The only outbound traffic is HTTP requests to the URLs already present in your own content, in order to read their response codes. No cookies, no Referer header, and no request body are sent. The optional scheduled-scan email report sends a plain summary to the WordPress admin address you configure; nothing leaves your server otherwise.