Follow this protocol, to produce a sheet you can send to devs etc, to remove 404s
Run a crawl with Screaming Frog
Export the report –> Screaming Frog – Bulk Export – Response Codes – Internal – Internal Client Error (4xxs) (check 500s too)
In Excel – Copy and paste the “destination” URLs into a new sheet – into column A
remove duplicates from the destination URLs that you’ve just copied into a new sheet
rename the colum – 404s duplicates removed
Copy and paste all of the source URLs and Destination URLs from the original sheet into columns B and C in the new sheet you just made.
You need “destination” in column B and “Source” in column C, as vlookup has to go left to right
Name column D in the new sheet “Example Source URL” and in cell D2 enter the lookup – VLOOKUP(A2,B:C,2,0) (put “equals sign” before the V. Drag the formula down
Copy column A and paste into a new sheet. Name the sheet “Final”.
Copy column D with the vlookup and paste values into column B in the “Final Spreadsheet”
In “final”, you should now have all the unique 404s and an example of a page that links to those 404s.
Fix these and then re-run the crawl and report. Fixing the individual broken links normally sorts 90% of them.
look out for 404s that are classed as HTTP Redirects in the “type” column – these don’t seem to have a unique source URL. You may have to search for the URL in the search box in Screaming Frog and click the “inlinks” tab to see original link to the non-secure http page
If you like, before you send off the report to someone, you can double check the “destination” URLs definitely are 404s, by pasting them into screaming frog in “list” mode
howto_404s_reportwithinlinksDownload
