OKC SEO

Orphan Page Checker: Find the Pages Nothing Links To

Enter your website. We read your sitemap, follow the links from your homepage (up to 300 pages), and list the pages nothing links to, plus broken links, buried pages and dead ends, with what to do about each. No signup.

Only check a site you run or have permission to check. Most checks take one to four minutes, longer if your robots.txt asks for a Crawl-delay; keep this tab open.

What an orphan page is, and why it matters

An orphan page is a page on your site that no other page links to. Visitors can't click their way to it, and search engines have to rely on your sitemap to find it. Google's own guidance is direct about it:

"Every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site."
Google Search Central, Link best practices for Google, checked 2026-10-08.
"A sitemap helps search engines discover URLs on your site, but it doesn't guarantee that all the items in your sitemap will be crawled and indexed."
Google Search Central, What is a sitemap, checked 2026-10-08.

So a page that sits only in your sitemap depends on the sitemap alone to be found, and Google says a sitemap is no guarantee. Google also says that when pages are properly linked, it can usually discover most of a site. Common causes: a service page that was never added to the menu, a blog post that dropped off the paginated archive, a landing page built for an ad, or an old page left behind after a redesign.

How the check works

  1. We read your robots.txt first and follow its rules for our crawler (user agent OKCSEO-OrphanCheck), including any Crawl-delay. If it asks crawlers to stay out, we stop.
  2. We read your sitemap: the one your robots.txt names, or /sitemap.xml and /sitemap_index.xml. Sitemap index files are followed two levels down, up to 12 files and 5,000 addresses.
  3. We start at your homepage and follow plain links (an a tag with an href) as your server sends the page, a few pages at a time, until we run out of links or reach 300 pages.
  4. We then fetch the sitemap pages no link led us to, so we can tell a true orphan from a page that redirects, fails or says noindex.
  5. Last, we compare the two lists. Any page in your sitemap that no counted page links to is an orphan. Every link is sorted by where it sits on the page (body text, menu, footer, breadcrumb or pagination), the same way we check our own sites.

What each finding means

Orphan page
A page we can show to be in use (it answers, isn't noindex, and is its own canonical) that no counted page links to. Links on noindex pages and on pages that point their canonical elsewhere don't count. We find these through your sitemap.
Near-orphan
A page with links, but only from 1 page, only from the footer or pagination, or only from pages that are themselves cut off from your homepage.
Buried page
A page that takes 4 or more clicks to reach from your homepage. That cutoff is our own rule of thumb, not a Google number.
Dead end
A page with no links to your other pages in its body text or breadcrumb. Menus and footers alone don't count, because they are the same on every page.
Broken internal link
A link on your site to one of your own addresses that answers with an error, or doesn't answer.
Sitemap problem
An address in your sitemap that redirects, fails, says noindex, points its canonical tag elsewhere, or is blocked by your robots.txt.

Pages that say noindex, pages whose canonical tag points somewhere else, and site utility pages (privacy, terms, contact, about, login, cart and the like) are left out of the orphan and near-orphan lists, because those are usually reached from the footer on purpose. Links on utility pages still count as links.

What it can't see

  • A crawl can only see links. A page that gets visits only from ads, email or social posts, and is in neither your links nor your sitemap, is invisible to this check. Tools that also read your Google Analytics or Search Console data can catch those; this one doesn't ask for that access.
  • We read the page as your server sends it, so links added later by JavaScript aren't seen, and neither are buttons or menus that work without an a href link. Google says it generally can only crawl a link that is an a element with an href, so buttons without one are worth fixing; links added by JavaScript may still be found by Google, but this check can't confirm them.
  • The check stops at 300 pages. On a bigger site, pages we found no link to are shown as possible orphans, because the link might sit on a page past the limit. Search your own site before changing anything.
  • Without a sitemap we can still find broken links, buried pages and dead ends, but we can't name orphans, because nothing lists the pages that links don't reach.
  • Pages behind a login, and pages your robots.txt closes to crawlers, aren't fetched.
  • Each website (www and non-www count as one) can be checked 3 times a day, and each visitor can run 5 checks a day. Each check fetches at most 3 pages at a time, about 5 pages a second at most, and 300 pages in all, plus your robots.txt, up to 12 sitemap files and any redirects along the way. When robots.txt asks for a Crawl-delay we wait that long between pages (we don't start if it asks for more than 8 seconds), so a check usually takes one to four minutes, longer with a Crawl-delay.
  • If a site turns our requests away 3 times in a row (access denied or too many requests), the check stops. We never try to get around a block.

How it compares

Why we built another one: the free checkers we looked at on 2026-10-08 either cap the size or need more access than a quick check should.

"The checker processes up to 50 URLs per analysis instantly"
LinkBoss free checker, checked 2026-10-08. Good for a small site or one section. It works from a sitemap or a pasted list, so it doesn't crawl from your homepage.
"To crawl the whole website and open up the configuration to integrate with the three sources, an SEO Spider licence is required."
Screaming Frog SEO Spider, checked 2026-10-08. The most complete method, because it adds Google Analytics and Search Console data, but it is desktop software and this setup needs a paid licence.

This checker sits in between. It crawls up to 300 pages from your homepage and compares them with up to 5,000 addresses from your sitemap, with no account. You get a fix list written for the person who runs the site, with suggested pages to add each missing link to.

Privacy

We fetch your public pages to run the check and send the results to your screen. We don't keep the pages, their titles or their addresses. While a check runs we hold your site's address and its robots.txt rules so every step follows them; the record is deleted when the check finishes, or the next time the checker is used after its 45 minutes are up. To enforce the daily limits we keep a scrambled code made from your network address, a secret key and the date (and one made from the website), deleted the next time the checker is used on a later day. We look the domain up through Cloudflare's DNS service to make sure it is a public address. We also keep anonymous daily totals, such as how many checks ran and how many orphan pages they found in all.

Questions

Are orphan pages bad for SEO?

Google doesn't describe orphan pages as a penalty. The problem is practical: no internal link points visitors or crawlers to the page, so it depends on your sitemap to be found, and Google says a sitemap doesn't guarantee crawling or indexing. If the page matters, link to it from a related page. If it doesn't, redirect or remove it.

Should I just add orphan pages to my menu?

Usually not. A link from a related page, with words that say where it goes, tells readers and Google something about the page (Google's link guide says this about link text). Menus are best kept for your main sections. We suggest likely pages to link from, based on the folder and the words the pages share.

Why is a page I know is linked showing as an orphan?

Common reasons: the link is added by JavaScript (this check reads the page as your server sends it), it sits on a page past the 300-page limit, or it points to a slightly different address that doesn't redirect (for example a different spelling of the path). Check the link's href on the live page.

What should I do with the sitemap problems?

List only the final, indexable address of each page you want found. Swap redirected addresses for where they end up, and take out pages that fail or say noindex.

Does this check slow my site down?

Each check fetches at most 3 pages at a time, about 5 pages a second at most, and 300 pages in all, plus your robots.txt, up to 12 sitemap files and any redirects along the way. It follows your robots.txt, including Crawl-delay, and names itself in every request (user agent OKCSEO-OrphanCheck), so you can see it in your logs.

Can I block this checker?

Yes. Add User-agent: OKCSEO-OrphanCheck with Disallow: / to your robots.txt and it will stop at the first step.

Sources

Built by OKC SEO. Updated 2026-10-08. How we research · More free tools