LinkChecker vs. DeepTrawl; a comparison

We recently came across a Firefox plugin called LinkChecker. Like DeepTrawl LinkChecker tests web pages for broken links. We tried it out and really liked it. To help people decide between the two approaches to link checking we thought we'd write a comparison of their advantages.

How does LinkChecker work?

LinkChecker is a plugin for Firefox, you can download it here. After a quick automatic installation LinkChecker places a 'Check Page Links' item on the Tools menu.

Once started LinkChecker checks all the links on the page Firefox is currently displaying. This process seems quite quick so we assume it's checking multiple links simultaneously, not one at a time.

The really cool bit is how LinkChecker shows what it's doing & which links have errors...

We tried it out on one of the pages of our test site (an old broken version of DeepTrawl.com). LinkChecker highlights the links it's checked as it progresses. You can see in the screen shot to the right that it has checked multiple links which turned out to be ok (highlighted in green) and one which failed (highlighted in red).

The style of LinkChecker's user interface is minimal and intuitive; just watch what color the link is highlighted with!

From what we could see LinkChecker will only check the links on one page at a time but if you have a small site this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Advantages of LinkChecker

• If you're a Firefox user it's always with you, two clicks away.

• Very easy to pick up and use, nothing to learn.

• It's free!

How does DeepTrawl work?

DeepTrawl is a desktop application for Windows / Mac. It can be downloaded and installed using the link at the bottom of this page.

DeepTrawl is a general website quality checker which has integrated link checking capabilities. It spiders entire websites so every link on every page is checked. While it's working it can perform many other checks, for example checking image links, validating the pages to xhtml standards and doing a thorough spell check.

As shown in the screenshot to the left DeepTrawl error reports look like the results from a search engine. Every page which contains any kind of error is in the list with it's errors below.

DeepTrawl can also show all the errors highlighted in your web browser using the 'View in Browser' option and show the errors highlighted in it's integrated html editor (shown below).

Advantages of DeepTrawl

• Checks for broken links and other errors on every page of your site.

• Browser independent.

• Errors can be highlighted in the integrated html editor.

• Has multiple types of checks: broken links, xhtml validation, spelling & many more.

• Results can be saved and shared.

• Timers can be set to check sites regularly.