How to Check If Your Affiliate Links Are Working

You spent hours writing that product review. You optimized for SEO, built backlinks, and finally started ranking. Traffic is flowing. But your commissions aren't growing.

The culprit? Broken affiliate links. And you had no idea they were broken until you checked your earnings report weeks later.

This happens more often than you'd think. Products get discontinued, merchants change their URL structures, affiliate programs update their tracking parameters. Every broken link is a visitor who clicked, saw an error page, and left.

Why Affiliate Links Break

Understanding why links break helps you catch problems faster. Here are the most common causes:

How to Manually Check Your Affiliate Links

The simplest approach is to click each link yourself. Here's what to look for:

The Problem with Manual Checking

Manual checking works, but it doesn't scale. The more links you have, the less realistic it becomes to check each one regularly. And the links you skip are the ones that break.

Most affiliates check monthly at best. That means a link could be broken for 30 days before you notice—30 days of lost commissions.

Using Browser Extensions

Browser extensions like Check My Links or Broken Link Checker can scan a page and identify broken links. They're faster than manual checking but have limitations:

• They only check HTTP status codes. A link returning 200 (OK) might still be broken if it redirects to the wrong page.
• They don't verify affiliate IDs. The link might work but not credit you.
• You still have to run them manually. No automatic monitoring.
• They check one page at a time. You need to visit every page on your site.

Browser extensions help, but they only cover part of the problem.

Automated Link Monitoring

The most reliable approach is automated monitoring—a system that checks your links regularly and alerts you when something breaks.

This turns link maintenance from a manual chore into a background process. You only hear about it when there's a problem to fix.

What to Do When You Find a Broken Link

Once you've identified a broken affiliate link, here's how to handle it:

For Discontinued Products

1. Find an alternative product to recommend
2. Update your content to reference the new product
3. Replace the affiliate link
4. Consider adding a note like "Updated January 2026" so readers know the content is current

For Changed URLs

1. Find the new URL for the product or merchant
2. Generate a fresh affiliate link through your network dashboard
3. Update all instances of the old link

For Stripped Affiliate IDs

1. Check if the merchant changed their affiliate program terms
2. Regenerate the link from your affiliate dashboard
3. Test the new link to confirm your ID stays intact through redirects

Building a Link Maintenance Routine

Consistency matters more than frequency. Here's a practical routine:

Protecting Your Commission Revenue

Every affiliate marketer eventually learns this lesson—usually after losing money to a link that broke weeks ago. The question is whether you learn it after losing $50 or $500.

The affiliates who earn consistently aren't necessarily better at SEO or content. They're better at maintenance. They catch broken links fast, fix them faster, and never let a single URL drain their revenue for weeks.

Whether you check links manually, use browser tools, or set up automated monitoring, the important thing is having a system. Pick an approach that matches your scale and stick with it.

The sooner you start checking, the less money you lose to links that broke while you weren't looking.