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SmarterTrack Reporting Broken Link That is Not Broken - How to Clear
Idea shared by Jim Rosemary - 8/10/2026 at 10:52 PM
Under Consideration
In our SmarterTrack knowledge base, two articles are throwing a broken link alert.  Neither link is actually broken.  How can I clear the alert?

In the "Broken Links" management page, I see a "Delete" button above the reported broken link details.  Will clicking that delete the alert, or does it delete the entire KB article?
Jim Rosemary
New Tech Web, Inc.
Eric McCarthy Replied
8/11/2026 at 7:52 AM
Employee Post
The Delete button deletes the KB article itself, not the alert — don't use it for this. 

If you can provide some more detail about the false broken links that might make it easier for us to determine why they are being flagged. Does it state what type of broken link it is?

If you are seeing the link flagged as "insecure", that can be fixed by editing the link. The "insecure" link is using http instead of https when the given site has https available, so changing them to use https and then saving will rescan the article and those should go away.

If it is not an "insecure" type, then try re-running the scan. The scan wipes all existing alerts and re-flags only links that fail this time. On the Knowledge Base articles page, run "Scan for Broken Links" from the Actions menu. 

If it is not of the type "insecure", and a rescan still shows the links as broken, then that means that your SmarterTrack cannot reach that site. You can check the BrokenLinkScan-KB log in the logs page to find a more clear reason why any link is being listed as broken. 
Eric McCarthy
Lead Software Developer
SmarterTools Inc.
The two links – which appear in two unrelated KB articles in our system – are:

https://help.x.com/en/using-x/embed-x-feed – This goes directly to the page on X as expected, no issues.  Not sure why this is being reported as a broken link.

https://www.whatsmydns.net – This site has a Cloudflare CAPTCHA in front of it, so maybe this is why SmarterStats thinks it's broken.

I've inspected the HTML to make sure there aren't any stray anchor tags.  Both links are "https", so it's not an insecure link issue.

The "Broken Links" report just lists the link URL and the corresponding link text, which is the URL itself.  No reason given.

I've re-run the "Rescan for All Broken Links" function several times and keep getting the same result.

If the issue with the second link is the Cloudflare check, how do I remove this KB article and link from the broken links list?
Jim Rosemary
New Tech Web, Inc.
Just checked the log files and found these records:
Exception: https://help.x.com/en/using-x/embed-x-feed
System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.
   at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
   at SmarterTrack.Data.HelperClasses.BrokenLinkScanner.checkLink(Dictionary`2& checkedLinks, StreamWriter sw, String url, Uri uri, Int32 redirects)

Exception: https://www.whatsmydns.net/
System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.
   at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
   at SmarterTrack.Data.HelperClasses.BrokenLinkScanner.checkLink(Dictionary`2& checkedLinks, StreamWriter sw, String url, Uri uri, Int32 redirects)

Might be that the remote server is simply throwing the wrong response code?
Jim Rosemary
New Tech Web, Inc.
Eric McCarthy Replied
8/13/2026 at 10:17 AM
Employee Post
It looks like the remote servers are throwing the 403. SmarterTrack sees that as it being broken, when if an actual user uses the link its not. The issue isn't that they show up, but that you cannot dismiss them once they are verified. 

This is technically not a bug since it is doing what it was designed to. I am going to create a task for us to look into adding a feature to allow the dismissing of the broken link. I may also want to update the text so you have a better understanding as to why its in the list. 

To make it so we can keep this post updated properly, I will go ahead and change this thread type from a problem thread to and idea thread. That way we can keep this post updated with the progress of this.
Eric McCarthy
Lead Software Developer
SmarterTools Inc.
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