A link shows as broken when it isn't.

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   Sustainable Sueposted 5 years ago

   One of my new hubs, about deciding whether or not to live without a car, is showing a broken link. However, when I click on the link (Money Under 30) it takes me right to the article I'm referencing. Why would it show as a broken link when it isn't broken?
   
   https://toughnickel.com/frugal-living/D … hout-a-Car

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   1. STAFF

      Matt Wellsposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Click the 'retest' button in the broken links section in your HubPages account. If the warning still appears click the 'ignore' button.

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      peachpurpleposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Try to click the "broken link" when you are on your own hub, not under the edit page.

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   Glenn Stokposted 5 years ago

   The link fails the test because you have an extra "#" at the end of the URL. Remove that character and it  will be fine.

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      Sustainable Sueposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      There is no # in the link now, so it's probably that I caught it right away. Although when I first looked, I copied and pasted the old link into a new window and it went right there. How often does HP crawl for dead links, anyone know?

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         Glenn Stokposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Someone must have removed the “#” from the end of the url if you don’t see it now. Maybe they fixed it for you. I didn’t go back to check it myself, but to clarify what I think happened - you probably copy and pasted the url and left the # in there from a previous search that linked to the top of that page. It works because browsers will go to the top. But the test bot that HubPages uses assumes the url is bad when it sees this extra character at the end, so it flagged it as a bad link.
         
         However, as Brandon said, it gives you the chance to bypass the error message and follow the link anyway. Then your browser goes to the top of that page. You wouldn’t know that anything is wrong because you expect to be at the top anyway, but the bot didn’t like it.

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            lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            I never saw the #, that's why I asked Sue what she has in the text capsule. The link I posted in my reply is what I saw at the time of checking.

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   lobobrandonposted 5 years ago

   If I look at the source code of the link, I do not see the link you have put in there because HP overrules it with their dialogue that tells users the link is broken and gives them the opportunity to visit that link anyway. When I copy the URL of the link that message points me to I get this URL:  https://www. moneyunder30.com/true-cost-of-owning-a-car (space added by me) which is exactly the same as the final destination URL which works fine.
   
   If you edit your hub, do you have this exact URL in there? If yes, I'd contact the team about it. I would also say that the error popped up because the URL was dead for a brief moment in time, the exact time HP crawled to look into it.

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   Sustainable Sueposted 5 years ago

   Checked the broken link in full read mode (not "edit") and it worked. Retested per Matt and it still read bad link. So I followed your advice, Matt, and clicked "ignore." Thank you. That cleared it.

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      Glenn Stokposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Sue, I just tried clicking that link in your hub and hp still reports it as broken. So I looked at the URL you used and it still has the # character at the end. I thought you said it was no longer there. But it is. Why don’t you just edit that link in the hub and remove that character as I suggested earlier. I am sure that will solve your problem.
      
      Brandon, How come I see it and you don’t? Try hovering over that link in her hub. Or look at the HTML.

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         lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         The first thing I did was looked at the source code but I saw the script that hubpages places in there when a link is broken. I couldn't see the actual link. I did right click and copy the link from the dialogue that pops up giving you the option to visit the link anyway.
         
         P.s I didn't check again as I'm on my phone right now.

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            Sustainable Sueposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            I just checked it again, and there is no # sign. Glenn, have you cleared your cache lately? Maybe your computer is putting up an old page.

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               Glenn Stokposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               Well, now it’s gone and your link is working. Never had to clear my cache. It’s gone now anyway. Did you fix it? If not then staff must have done it for you.

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5. 95

   Sustainable Sueposted 5 years ago

   Whenever I checked it, there was no hash tag, so that part I didn't fix. I did follow the link to the page I wanted, then re-copy and paste the page's link back in the text, test it, and do the HP re-check that Matt suggested. Whatever happened, I'm glad it's working now.

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