Link extractor: every link on a page, and what each one says.

Enter a URL. The tool fetches the page's HTML without running JavaScript and lists every link it contains, with its anchor text, split into internal and external, and the rel attributes where a link has them.

By · Updated September 25, 2026

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Link extractor

Runs on our server, which fetches the public URL you enter. We count runs and never save what you enter; an identical request may be answered from memory for up to five minutes.

What you can do with it

  • List the outbound links on a page before publishing it
  • Check that sponsored and affiliate links carry rel=sponsored
  • See whether a navigation menu or related-posts block exists in the raw HTML
  • Collect the internal links from a hub page to review its anchors

How it works, step by step

  1. 1

    Extract the links from the raw HTML

    Start from what the server sends, not from what the browser shows after scripts run. That is the version every crawler sees. View source in a browser shows it; the developer tools element panel does not.

  2. 2

    Split internal from external

    Internal links point to your own site and pass context between your pages. External links point elsewhere. Review them separately, because the questions are different.

  3. 3

    Read the anchor text

    For each internal link, ask whether the anchor tells a reader and a crawler what the target page is about. 'Click here' and 'read more' say nothing. Descriptive, varied anchors that match the target's topic do.

  4. 4

    Check the rel attributes

    Paid and affiliate links should carry rel=sponsored. Links in comments or user posts should carry rel=ugc. Use rel=nofollow for other links you do not want to vouch for. Internal links usually need no rel value at all.

  5. 5

    Compare with the rendered page

    If a link you can see in the browser is missing from the extracted list, JavaScript added it. Crawlers that do not render scripts, which includes most AI crawlers, will not find it.

Links are how crawlers find pages and how they learn what a page is about before they read it. The anchor text of every link pointing at a page is a short description written by someone else, or by you on another page. A page’s links also say something about the page itself: who it cites, who paid to be there, which of your own pages it considers related.

The extractor gives you the complete list from the HTML, which is hard to see by eye on a long page with a header, footer, sidebar and related-posts block all contributing links.

Anchor text quality

For internal links, the anchor is your chance to tell search engines what the target is about.

  • Describe the target. “our guide to canonical tags” beats “this guide”, and both beat “here”.
  • Vary it naturally. The same exact phrase on every link to a page reads as a template. Different pages linking with different accurate descriptions read as real references.
  • Keep one anchor, one target. If the same anchor text points at two different pages, neither gets a clear signal.
  • Give image links alt text. An image link’s alt text is its anchor. With no alt, the link has no anchor at all.

The internal link checker flags these problems automatically on pasted HTML, which suits drafts that are not live yet.

What the rel values mean

rel="sponsored" is for paid placements, affiliate links and anything else compensated. rel="ugc" is for links inside comments, reviews and forum posts. rel="nofollow" is the general value for a link you do not want to vouch for. Google treats all three as hints rather than strict rules. You can combine them, for example rel="ugc nofollow". Leaving sponsored off a paid link is the one that can cause trouble, since Google’s spam policies cover link schemes.

Many sites build menus, related-content blocks and pagination in JavaScript. The browser shows the links; the raw HTML does not contain them. Google renders pages and may still find them, later. Crawlers that do not render, which as far as any vendor documents includes the major AI crawlers, never see them. If the extractor misses links you see on screen, those links are invisible to part of the web. The AI crawler simulator shows how much of the page’s text has the same problem.

What it does not do

It lists links from one page. It does not follow them, test for broken targets, or map links across the site.

Good links point at good pages. AltoRank plans and drafts that content every week, and a person approves each piece before it publishes.

Frequently asked questions

What does the extractor list?

Every link it finds in the page's raw HTML, with its anchor text, grouped into internal and external, and the rel attribute values such as nofollow, sponsored or ugc where a link has them.

Why is a link I can see on the page missing?

It is almost certainly added by JavaScript. The tool reads the HTML the server returns and does not run scripts. Google renders JavaScript in a later pass and may find the link, but many other crawlers, including most AI crawlers, will not. Links that matter for discovery should be plain anchor tags in the server-rendered HTML.

What is the difference between nofollow, sponsored and ugc?

rel=sponsored marks paid, affiliate or otherwise compensated links. rel=ugc marks links in user-generated content such as comments and forum posts. rel=nofollow is the general 'do not associate me with this link' value. Google treats all three as hints about how to handle the link.

Does it check whether the links work?

No. It lists the links in the page and their attributes. It does not request each target to check for broken links or redirects.

How is this different from the internal link checker?

The link extractor fetches a live URL and lists every link, internal and external. The internal link checker runs entirely in your browser on HTML you paste, and audits the internal anchors, flagging generic text, repeated targets and image links with no alt. Use the extractor for live pages and the checker for drafts.

Does it store the URL I enter?

No. Our server fetches the public page, returns the result to your browser and keeps only a count of how many times the tool ran that day. There is a daily usage limit so it can stay free without a signup.

More free tools

Free Internal Link Checker: Audit Anchors on Any Page Paste a page's HTML and get every internal link with its anchor text, flagged for generic anchors, repeated targets, image links with no alt and links to itself. Free AI Crawler Simulator: See What GPTBot Sees Fetch any URL as GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, OAI-SearchBot and Googlebot. See each robots.txt verdict, status code and the text in the raw HTML. Free Canonical Tag Checker: Test Any URL Enter a URL to see the canonical it declares, whether it points to itself or elsewhere, and whether the canonical target resolves. Free Website Metadata Checker: Title, OG, Schema Enter a URL and see the page's title, meta description, canonical, robots tag, Open Graph and Twitter tags, JSON-LD types, h1 and language.
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