Broken Link Detection
Broken internal links are the most common reason a Confluence space feels stale. Pulse scans for them every time a page is updated and on every full scan.
Where broken links surface
Section titled “Where broken links surface”- Global Dashboard → Broken Links card — total broken-link count across the whole instance.
- Global Dashboard → Space Overview tab — per-space broken-link counts.
- Space Dashboard → Broken Links tab — every broken link in that space, showing the source page and the missing target.
- Per-page score — broken links reduce that page’s Health Score.
What counts as a “broken” link
Section titled “What counts as a “broken” link”Pulse detects two kinds of internal Confluence links:
- Page macros — links written using Confluence’s structured page-reference format (the standard way the editor inserts a link to another page).
- Smart / URL links — direct URLs to other Confluence pages on the same site.
A link is considered broken when the target page no longer exists (deleted, moved without redirect) or the reference points at a page Pulse couldn’t resolve.
External links (to other sites) are not included — Pulse doesn’t act as a full web crawler. The focus is internal knowledge integrity.
How to fix a broken link
Section titled “How to fix a broken link”Open the Broken Links tab in the relevant Space Dashboard. Each row shows:
- Source page — the page that contains the broken link.
- Broken target — the page name or URL the link points at.
Click into the source page in Confluence, find the link, and either:
- Re-link to the correct page (if the target was renamed or moved), or
- Remove the link if the target is gone, or
- Replace with text describing what the link used to point to.
After your next save, that page’s score updates immediately and the broken link disappears from the list.
Scope: per space
Section titled “Scope: per space”Broken link detection runs within each space. A reference from Space A to a missing page in Space B will show up under Space A’s broken-links list. Reports are organized by where the broken link lives, not where the missing target is.
When detection runs
Section titled “When detection runs”| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| Page event | When a page is created or edited, Pulse re-checks its links immediately. |
| Weekly scan | Pulse re-checks links across all pages once a week — useful for catching breakages caused by target pages being deleted elsewhere. |
| Initial scan | The first time the Dashboard is opened after install. |
You shouldn’t need to manually re-trigger detection.
Limits
Section titled “Limits”- Broken external URLs are not detected.
- Anchor links within a page (
#section) are not validated. - Attachments and image references are not currently included in the broken-link list, only inter-page links.
- Content Health Score — how broken links reduce the score.
- Space Dashboards — where the per-space broken-link list lives.