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October 21, 2025

# Image URL Checker vs. Doing It by Hand: Is It Worth Switching?

Most teams don't switch to a tool for broken image links until the manual version has already cost them something — an hour lost, an error shipped, a page that quietly slipped through unchecked.

Doing it by hand isn't wrong, exactly. It's slow, and slow is where mistakes hide. Leaving `alt=""` on meaningful images purely out of habit — empty alt text should be reserved for genuinely decorative images only. And once a site grows past a handful of pages, checking by hand stops being a one-time task and becomes a recurring one nobody has time for.

What actually changes with a tool in the loop isn't the underlying work — it's how often you're willing to do it. Check image URLs after any CDN migration or hosting change — this is the single most common cause of sitewide broken images. That's the real ROI: not the first check, but the tenth one, which by hand simply wouldn't happen.

Where manual still wins: a single one-off check on a small site, or a case specific enough that no generic tool would catch the nuance anyway. Use descriptive, keyword-relevant filenames and alt text — beyond accessibility, alt text is what Google Images actually indexes on. Past that scale, the time saved compounds fast.

The same logic applies to robots.txt Generator work — anything repetitive enough to get skipped is exactly what's worth automating first.

If you're weighing this for your own site, trying Image URL Checker takes about the same time as reading this page.

Try Image URL Checker yourself

Everything in this guide runs directly in your browser — no signup, no install.

Open Image URL Checker →
More on broken image links
The Broken Image Links Checklist: What to Verify Before You Publish
A short, practical checklist for broken image links — the things worth checking every time, not just the first time.
Does Broken Image Links Still Matter in 2026?
A quick, honest look at whether broken image links is still worth the effort, or a holdover from an older era of SEO.
Broken Image Links FAQ: Questions People Actually Ask
Straight answers to the questions that come up most often about broken image links.
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