About the URL Validator
This validator checks each URL with the browser's own URL parser and confirms it is absolute, uses http or https, and has a plausible hostname. Failures say why: not an absolute URL, an unsupported scheme, a hostname without a dot. It does not fetch the URLs, so it cannot tell whether a page exists; it checks form, not reachability.
Absolute means the scheme is present, so /products/kettle and example.com/page both fail even though a browser would resolve the first against the current page and guess at the second. The scheme has to be http or https, which is why ftp:// and mailto: are rejected, and the hostname needs a dot unless it is localhost, which is allowed so that development URLs pass.
The failure that wastes the most time is nearly invisible: a trailing comma, full stop or closing bracket picked up when a link was copied out of a sentence, or a stray space in the middle of a path. Both fail here, which is the point, because both would equally break the link inside a sitemap or a bulk import.
Checking a list of links before it becomes a sitemap or a redirect map is the usual reason to run it. To break a single URL into parts, use the URL Parser; to pull URLs out of text, Extract URLs.
How to use
- Paste URLs, one per line.
- Read valid or invalid with reasons.
- Fix and re-check.
Common questions
- Does it check the page is live?
- No. It validates syntax only, without fetching anything.
- Why is ftp:// invalid?
- Only http and https are accepted as web URLs here.
- Is localhost accepted?
- Yes, localhost is allowed as a hostname without a dot.