Organize Links with Groups in Your Broken Link Checker

When you use a broken link checker to monitor a handful of URLs, keeping track of them is simple. You can eyeball the list, spot dead links quickly, and fix problems as they arise. But what happens when that list grows to 50 links? 100? 500?

Suddenly, finding the one broken download link for a specific client becomes a needle-in-a-haystack problem. Your weekly link report shows 15 failures, but you have no idea which project they belong to or who to notify. The simple list that once worked has become an unmanageable wall of URLs.

This is where link groups transform how you monitor. By organizing links into color-coded folders, you can manage hundreds of URLs with the same ease as managing ten. This guide shows you how to set up link groups in DeadLinkRadar and build an organization system that scales with your needs.

Why Organization Matters for Broken Link Monitoring

Before diving into the how-to, it's worth understanding why organization is critical when you check for broken links at scale. A dead link checker without organization is like a filing cabinet where every document is thrown in randomly. You might eventually find what you need, but it wastes time and creates frustration.

Consider these scenarios where groups make the difference:

Scenario 1: Client Accountability You manage links for five different clients. When your broken link checker reports 12 dead links, you need to know which client is affected. Without groups, you're manually cross-referencing URLs with client spreadsheets. With groups, you click once and see exactly which client's links failed.

Scenario 2: Priority Response Not all broken links are equally urgent. A dead payment link needs immediate attention. A broken link to a two-year-old blog post can wait. Groups let you categorize by urgency so you can check for broken links that matter most first.

Scenario 3: Team Routing Different teams own different links. Marketing handles campaign URLs. Engineering manages documentation links. When your dead link checker finds issues, groups tell you exactly who should fix what.

What You'll Learn

By the end of this guide, you'll know how to:

• Create groups with custom names, descriptions, and color coding
• Assign links to groups individually or in bulk
• Filter and manage links by group
• Build an organization strategy that matches your workflow
• Use your broken link checker more efficiently with categorized monitoring
• Troubleshoot common grouping issues

Whether you're managing links for multiple clients, different projects, or various content types, groups give you the structure to stay on top of everything.

Creating Your First Link Group in the Broken Link Checker

Link groups work like folders for your monitored URLs. Each group has a name, optional description, and a color that makes it instantly recognizable in your dashboard. When you check for broken links across hundreds of URLs, these visual distinctions become essential for quick navigation.

To create a new group:

1. Navigate to Dashboard > Groups in your DeadLinkRadar account
2. Click the New Group button in the top right
3. Enter a name for your group (up to 100 characters)
4. Add an optional description to help you remember what this group contains
5. Choose a color from the preset palette or enter a custom hex color
6. Click Create Group

Creating a new link group (click to view full size)

Understanding the Color System

DeadLinkRadar provides eight preset colors to help you quickly differentiate groups:

If the presets don't match your needs, you can enter any custom hex color code. Some teams use their client's brand colors to make groups instantly identifiable, while others develop their own internal color coding system.

Organizing Links into Groups for Better Dead Link Detection

Once you've created groups, you need to populate them with links. DeadLinkRadar offers two approaches: assigning links during creation and bulk assignment of existing links. Both methods integrate seamlessly with how you check for broken links, ensuring your dead link checker results are always organized.

Assigning Links When Adding Them

When you add a new link to your monitoring, you'll see a group dropdown in the add link form. Simply select the appropriate group before saving, and the link will be organized from the start.

This approach works well when you're adding links one at a time and already know where they belong. For bulk imports, you'll want to assign groups after the fact.

Bulk Assignment for Existing Links

If you've already imported links or want to reorganize your existing setup, bulk assignment is the way to go. From your links dashboard:

1. Use the checkboxes to select the links you want to organize
2. Click the Assign to Group action in the toolbar
3. Choose the target group from the dropdown
4. Confirm the assignment

The selected links will immediately appear under the chosen group. You can also remove links from a group by selecting them and choosing Remove from Group or by assigning them to a different group.

Groups dashboard with color-coded folders (click to view full size)

Filtering Links by Group

Once your links are organized, you can filter your dashboard to show only links from a specific group. This is particularly useful when:

• You need to focus on one client's links without distraction
• You're investigating issues reported for a specific project
• You want to generate a report for a particular content category

Click on any group card in your groups dashboard to view only the links within that group. The link count on each group card shows you at a glance how many URLs are being monitored in each category.

Group Management Best Practices for Broken Link Checkers

Building an effective organization system requires thinking about how you'll use groups day-to-day. The way you structure groups directly impacts how efficiently you can check for broken links and respond to dead link checker alerts. Here are strategies that work well across different use cases.

Naming Conventions

Clear, consistent naming makes groups easier to find and understand. Consider these patterns:

Avoid vague names like "Misc" or "Other" that become dumping grounds. If you find yourself creating catch-all groups, it's usually a sign you need to think more carefully about your categorization strategy.

Color Coding Strategies

Colors should carry meaning. Some effective approaches:

Traffic Light System

• Green for stable, low-maintenance links
• Amber for links that need occasional attention
• Red for critical links where failure has immediate impact

Client Brand Colors

• Use each client's primary brand color for their group
• Makes client-specific reports visually distinct

Content Type Colors

• Blue for informational content
• Purple for premium/gated content
• Orange for affiliate/monetized links
• Green for owned properties

The key is consistency. Once you establish a color meaning, stick with it across all your groups.

Pro Tips for Power Users of Dead Link Checkers

As your monitoring scales, these advanced strategies help you get more from link groups. Power users who check for broken links across large portfolios often discover that thoughtful organization saves hours of work each week.

Organize by Alert Sensitivity

Not all broken links are equally urgent. A dead affiliate link costs you money every minute it's down. A broken link to an old blog post? Less critical. Create groups based on how quickly you need to respond:

• Immediate Response (Red): Revenue-generating links, payment flows, critical downloads
• Same Day (Amber): Client-facing content, active marketing campaigns
• Weekly Review (Blue): Archive content, reference links, nice-to-haves

Then configure your notification preferences accordingly. You might want instant Discord alerts for the Immediate Response group but only weekly email digests for the Weekly Review group.

Separate by Responsible Team

If different people handle different links, groups make handoffs seamless:

• Marketing Team: Campaign landing pages, social links, promotional content
• Engineering: API documentation, technical resources, tool links
• Content Team: Blog posts, media embeds, download files

When a link fails, you immediately know who to notify based on which group it's in.

Use Groups for Reporting

Groups make generating client or project reports trivial. Instead of manually filtering through hundreds of links, you can:

1. Navigate to the client's group
2. View only their links and their current status
3. Export the filtered view for reporting

This turns a time-consuming task into a few clicks.

Managing Groups via the REST API

For developers and teams who want to automate their link management workflow, DeadLinkRadar provides a REST API for group operations. This enables you to integrate group management directly into your existing tools, CI/CD pipelines, or custom dashboards.

Creating Groups Programmatically

To create a group via the API, send a POST request to the groups endpoint:

curl -X POST https://deadlinkradar.com/api/groups \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Production Sites",
    "description": "Critical production URLs requiring 24/7 monitoring",
    "color": "#10B981"
  }'

The API returns the created group with its unique ID, which you can use to assign links:

{
  "id": "grp_abc123",
  "name": "Production Sites",
  "description": "Critical production URLs requiring 24/7 monitoring",
  "color": "#10B981",
  "linkCount": 0,
  "createdAt": "2026-01-07T10:30:00Z"
}

Assigning Links to Groups via API

When adding links programmatically, include the groupId parameter to automatically organize them:

curl -X POST https://deadlinkradar.com/api/links \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://example.com/critical-page",
    "groupId": "grp_abc123"
  }'

You can also update existing links to move them between groups:

curl -X PATCH https://deadlinkradar.com/api/links/lnk_xyz789 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "groupId": "grp_def456"
  }'

Bulk Operations with Groups

For large-scale operations, use the bulk endpoints. This is particularly useful when migrating links from another broken link checker or reorganizing your entire monitoring setup:

curl -X POST https://deadlinkradar.com/api/links/bulk \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "links": [
      {"url": "https://site1.com", "groupId": "grp_abc123"},
      {"url": "https://site2.com", "groupId": "grp_abc123"},
      {"url": "https://site3.com", "groupId": "grp_def456"}
    ]
  }'

The bulk endpoint processes up to 100 links per request, making it efficient to organize large batches while your dead link checker monitors everything in the background.

Filtering API Results by Group

When retrieving link status or generating reports, you can filter by group:

curl "https://deadlinkradar.com/api/links?groupId=grp_abc123&status=dead" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

This returns only dead links within the specified group, perfect for automated alerting systems or custom dashboards.

Real-World Case Study: Agency Managing Multiple Clients

Let's walk through how a digital agency might set up groups to manage links for five different clients. This practical example shows how organization transforms chaotic monitoring into a streamlined workflow.

The Scenario

BrightEdge Digital manages websites for five clients:

• Acme Corp - Enterprise software company (120 monitored links)
• FreshBite - Restaurant chain (45 monitored links)
• CloudScale - B2B SaaS startup (78 monitored links)
• Wellness Hub - Health and fitness platform (92 monitored links)
• TechLearn - Online education provider (156 monitored links)

Before implementing groups, their link dashboard was a wall of 491 URLs with no way to quickly identify which client was affected when their broken link checker reported issues.

The Solution: Client-Based Groups with Color Coding

BrightEdge created five groups, each using the client's primary brand color:

Now when their dead link checker reports failures, the color instantly tells them which client is affected. No more cross-referencing spreadsheets or searching through URLs.

The Workflow

When a broken link is detected:

1. The team receives a Slack notification showing the group color and name
2. The account manager for that client is automatically notified
3. The client-specific dashboard shows current link health at a glance
4. Weekly reports are generated per-group and sent to each client

What used to take 30 minutes of manual sorting now happens automatically. The team spends their time fixing links instead of figuring out who they belong to.

Results

After implementing groups, BrightEdge saw:

• 60% reduction in time spent on link management
• Faster client response times (average 2 hours vs. 8 hours previously)
• Improved client satisfaction with organized monthly reports
• Zero missed critical issues due to better prioritization

This case study illustrates why organization isn't just a nice-to-have feature. When you check for broken links across multiple clients or projects, groups become essential infrastructure.

Advanced Group Strategies

As your monitoring needs evolve, these advanced strategies help you extract maximum value from link groups.

Hierarchical Organization

While DeadLinkRadar doesn't support nested groups, you can achieve a similar effect through naming conventions:

Client A - Production
Client A - Staging
Client A - Archive
Client B - Production
Client B - Staging

This approach gives you the benefits of hierarchy while maintaining a flat, searchable group structure. The alphabetical sorting keeps related groups together.

Temporary Project Groups

For time-limited campaigns or projects, create temporary groups with clear expiration indicators:

• [2026-Q1] Winter Campaign - Remove after March
• [2026-01] Product Launch - Remove after January
• [TEMP] Migration Testing - Remove after verification

This prevents group clutter while ensuring project-specific links are organized during active phases.

Environment-Based Groups

Development teams often need to monitor links across multiple environments. Create groups that reflect your deployment pipeline:

Each environment can have different notification settings, ensuring you're not overwhelmed with alerts from non-production systems.

Seasonal Rotation

E-commerce sites and seasonal businesses can use groups to manage time-sensitive content:

1. Create groups for each season or campaign period
2. Move links between groups as content becomes relevant
3. Archive seasonal groups after the period ends

For example, "Holiday 2025 Campaign" links can be monitored actively in November-December, then moved to an archive group in January. This keeps your active monitoring focused on current content.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Encountering problems with link groups? Here are solutions to the most common issues users face when organizing their broken link checker workflow.

Links Not Appearing in Group

If you assigned links to a group but they're not showing up:

• Refresh the page to ensure the latest data is loaded
• Check your current view - Are you viewing the correct group? Click the group card directly rather than using filters
• Verify the assignment completed - Look for any error messages or failed operations
• Check for caching - Some browsers cache the previous state; try a hard refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R or Cmd+Shift+R)
• Verify API response - If using the API, check that the response included the updated groupId

Accidentally Deleted a Group

If you delete a group, the links within it are not deleted. They simply become "ungrouped" and will appear in your main links list without a group assignment. You can create a new group and reassign them.

Recovery steps:

1. Create a new group with the same (or similar) name
2. Navigate to your main links dashboard
3. Filter by "No Group" to find orphaned links
4. Bulk select and assign to the new group

Worth noting: Deleting a group is permanent. There's no undo, so double-check before confirming the deletion.

Too Many Groups

If you have so many groups that finding the right one is difficult, consider consolidating. Often, this happens when you create groups that are too specific. "Client A - Website" and "Client A - Blog" might work better as a single "Client A" group.

Signs you need to consolidate:

• More than 15-20 groups
• Groups with only 1-5 links each
• Difficulty remembering which group links belong to
• Excessive time spent deciding where to put new links

You can also use the search functionality in your groups dashboard to quickly find groups by name.

Group Colors Look Similar

When multiple groups have similar colors, it defeats the purpose of color coding. Review your color assignments and ensure sufficient contrast:

• Avoid adjacent hues - Blue (#3B82F6) and Cyan (#06B6D4) can look similar at a glance
• Use the color families - Pick one color per family (warm: red/orange/amber, cool: blue/cyan/purple)
• Test in different lighting - Colors may appear different on various monitors

Consider using the preset colors initially, as they're designed for maximum visual distinction.

Bulk Assignment Not Working

If you're trying to bulk assign links but the operation fails:

• Check selection limits - Some operations have maximum selection sizes
• Verify permissions - Ensure your account has permission to modify all selected links
• Look for locked links - Links currently being checked may be temporarily locked
• Try smaller batches - If assigning 100+ links, try batches of 50

API Group Operations Returning Errors

Common API issues and solutions:

Group Statistics Not Updating

If your group's link count or status breakdown seems incorrect:

• Statistics update every few minutes, not instantly
• A full refresh forces immediate recalculation
• Contact support if discrepancies persist beyond 5 minutes

Getting Started Checklist

Ready to implement link groups in your workflow? Follow this checklist to set up an organized monitoring system from scratch.

Day 1: Initial Setup

• Audit your current links - Review your monitored URLs and identify natural groupings
• Define 3-5 initial groups - Start broad (clients, projects, or content types)
• Choose a color strategy - Decide whether colors represent priority, clients, or content
• Create your groups - Navigate to Dashboard > Groups and create each one
• Assign existing links - Use bulk assignment to organize your current URLs

Week 1: Refinement

• Monitor the workflow - Pay attention to friction points when checking for broken links
• Adjust group boundaries - Split or merge groups based on actual usage
• Configure notifications - Set up different alert preferences for different groups
• Train team members - Ensure everyone understands the grouping system

Ongoing Maintenance

• Review group health monthly - Are all groups being used? Any orphaned links?
• Archive completed projects - Move finished campaign links to archive groups
• Update documentation - Keep a simple guide for your color and naming conventions
• Gather feedback - Ask team members what's working and what isn't

Quick Reference Card

Keep this summary handy as you work:

Summary: Transform Your Broken Link Checker with Groups

Link groups transform chaotic link monitoring into an organized system that scales with your needs. When you use a dead link checker to monitor hundreds of URLs, organization isn't optional. It's essential for efficient management.

By categorizing links by client, project, platform, or priority, you gain:

• Faster issue identification: Know exactly which project is affected when your broken link checker reports failures
• Cleaner reporting: Generate client or project-specific reports when you check for broken links
• Smarter notifications: Route dead link checker alerts to the right people based on link groups
• Reduced cognitive load: Stop scrolling through endless URLs to find what you need
• Better prioritization: Address critical broken links first, archive links later
• Team accountability: Clear ownership makes it easy to route issues to the right person
• Historical context: Groups preserve the organizational knowledge even as team members change

The groups feature works seamlessly with every other DeadLinkRadar capability. Whether you're running bulk imports, configuring alert channels, or generating reports, your organizational structure carries through. When you check for broken links, results are automatically tagged with their group membership.

API users benefit equally. Every endpoint supports group filtering, making it easy to build custom dashboards or automated workflows that respect your organizational structure. The consistency between the web interface and API means you can mix manual and automated management without conflicts.

Start with a few broad groups based on how you naturally think about your links. As you use them, you'll discover where more specific categorization helps. The goal isn't to create the perfect organization system on day one. It's to build a structure that makes your broken link checker experience more efficient over time.

Consider starting with these three groups:

1. Critical Links - Revenue-impacting, client-facing, or high-traffic URLs
2. Standard Links - Regular content that should be monitored but isn't urgent
3. Archive Links - Historical content you want to track but rarely check

From there, expand based on your actual needs. Many users find that grouping by client or project becomes valuable as their monitoring portfolio grows beyond 50-100 links. The case study earlier shows how an agency with 500+ links manages everything through five simple groups.

The investment in organization pays dividends every time you interact with your monitoring dashboard. Fewer clicks to find what you need. Clearer reports for stakeholders. Faster response times when issues arise. That's the power of link groups.

Ready to organize your links? Head to your DeadLinkRadar dashboard and create your first group. If you need help setting up an organization strategy for your specific use case, reach out to us at support@deadlinkradar.com.