Audit YouTube Video Links After a Website Domain Change
Rebranding or migrating your site quietly breaks every old-domain link in your video descriptions at once. Here's how to find them all.
Updated 26 September 2026 · 6 min readA rebrand, a platform migration, or simply moving to a cleaner URL structure is a reasonable thing to do for a website. It's a much bigger deal for a YouTube channel that's been linking to that website in video descriptions for years. Every one of those links — the "read more here," the resource page, the affiliate redirect, the contact link in the footer of every description — points at a domain that no longer resolves the moment the migration goes live.
This is about treating that migration as the link-breaking event it actually is: why it's different from one dead sponsor link, what a full-channel scan catches, and what to do with the results once you have them.
Why a domain change breaks links differently
Most broken-link problems on a channel happen one at a time — a sponsor's promo page expires, a blog post gets deleted, a shortener account lapses. A domain change is different: it's a single event with a blast radius across the entire channel. Every video description that ever linked to your old domain — going back as far as the channel does — breaks at the exact same moment, whether that's five videos or five hundred.
This isn't a 'check it when someone reports it' problem
When to run the audit
- Immediately after the migration goes live
The scope of the problem is fixed the moment the old domain stops resolving — running the audit early finds the whole list, not a growing trickle of complaints.
- Before announcing the new domain publicly
If you're pointing an audience at the new site, it's worth knowing your existing video descriptions aren't quietly sending traffic to a dead old one.
- As a recurring check if the migration happened in phases
A staged cutover (old domain redirects for a while, then stops) is worth re-checking once the redirect period actually ends.
Scanning the whole channel in one pass
Point the scanner at the channel
Let it check every description
Review results grouped by video
What the scan gives you back
The scanner's results are organized by video, with a status per link — so instead of a single channel-wide "some links are broken" verdict, you get a workable list.
| What you see | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Video-by-video grouping | Which specific uploads still reference the old domain, not just that some do. |
| Per-link status | Which individual URLs in each description are broken or expired. |
| Affiliate links included | Old-domain affiliate or redirect links are checked the same as any other link. |
Fixing what the scan finds
The scan tells you where the old domain still lives — it doesn't rewrite anything itself. Once you have the list of affected videos and links, the actual fix is a separate step: Bulk Find & Replace can rewrite the old domain string across every matched video's description in one batch, rather than editing each description by hand.
How MyFreshTools Helps
What the tool does
The Broken Link Scanner checks the links across a channel's video descriptions for broken or expired URLs, affiliate links included, and returns the results grouped by video so you can see exactly which uploads need attention.
Who it's for
- Creators or brands who just migrated or rebranded their website's domain.
- Channel managers doing a full audit rather than waiting for viewer complaints.
- Anyone with affiliate or sponsor links tied to a domain that's since changed.
How to use it
- Run the scan across the whole channel right after the domain migration goes live.
- Review the per-video, per-link results to see where the old domain still appears.
- Use Bulk Find & Replace to rewrite the old domain across the matched videos.
Requirements and limits
- A free MyFreshTools account. No card, free credits on signup.
- The scanner finds broken links — it does not rewrite descriptions; that's a separate step with Bulk Find & Replace.
- Bulk Find & Replace requires Connect YouTube with write access and only edits videos your connected channel owns.
- Bulk Find & Replace's free plan scans the 25 most recent videos; a paid plan scans the whole channel.
Frequently asked questions
No — a channel-wide scan checks every video description in one pass, rather than opening videos one at a time to see which links still point at the old domain.
Yes. Results are grouped by video, so you get a per-video, per-link status rather than a single channel-wide pass/fail.
No — the Broken Link Scanner finds and reports broken or expired links, it doesn't rewrite them. Once you know which videos and links are affected, Bulk Find & Replace can rewrite the old domain across the matched videos.
Yes. An affiliate link built on your old domain (a redirect page, a tracking link) breaks the same way a plain URL does once the domain is gone — the scanner checks both without distinguishing link type.
Right after the migration, not after you start getting complaints or notice a drop in click-throughs. Every video that ever linked to the old domain breaks at the same moment the migration goes live, so there's no reason to wait to find out how many that is.
The takeaway
A domain change is a single event that breaks every old-domain link across a channel at once — which is exactly why a full scan right after the migration, not a wait-and-see approach, is the right response. Find the full list in one pass, then fix it in one batch.