Technical SEO
Crawl, render, index, migrate
- Understand
Stage 2: Understand
Page links and anchors audit
Every link on one page: internal and external counts, rel values, empty and generic anchors, and an optional status check.
Free to use. No login, nothing stored.
What it checks
Understand- Internal, external and unique link targets, with rel="nofollow", "sponsored" and "ugc" counts
- Anchors with no text, image alt or label, and generic anchors such as "click here"
- Links that are not crawlable: empty or "#" hrefs, javascript: hrefs, anchors without href
- http:// links on an https page, links to the page itself, duplicate anchors and targets
- Optional HTTP status of up to 15 unique targets, with a CSV export of the whole table
Method question for this stage: Do machines know what each page and brand is?
Run the check
Results
No check run yet
- Info
One row per rule, then a table of every link
Totals and rel values, empty anchors, generic anchors, links that are not crawlable, http:// links on an https page, self and jump links, long anchors, new-tab links without rel=noopener, repeated anchors and targets. Then anchor text, target, type, rel and (after the optional status check) HTTP status for each link.
Links are how a crawler finds the next page and how a reader decides to follow it; none of these rows says how a page ranks. Stage 2 of the method.
How we check
The rules this tool tests, and where they come from
A result is a check against a published rule, not a prediction. Every row shows its working.
Rules and sources
- Google: link best practices (crawlable links and anchor text)
- Google: qualify your outbound links
- W3C WAI: understanding SC 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context)
Links go to the operator's or standards body's own documentation. We do not link to third-party summaries.
Read more
Next step
Fix what it finds
This check belongs to the Understand stage of the Crawl-to-Citation Method. The service below covers the fix; the Diagnostic ranks it against everything else.
Most engagements start with the Search Visibility Diagnostic ($2,500).
It covers all six method stages, so what this tool finds is ranked against everything else before you commit to any work.
Book the diagnosticLink questions
Why anchors matter, why the status check is capped, and what the rel values mean.
Still have questions? Book a callWhy do generic anchors such as "click here" matter?
A link’s text is the one description of its target that travels with it. A screen-reader user tabbing through links hears "click here" five times and learns nothing; WCAG 2.4.4 asks that the purpose of a link be clear from its text or its immediate context. Google’s link best practices ask for descriptive anchor text for the same reason: it tells the crawler what the target page is about. Fixing anchors makes the page clearer for readers and crawlers; it is not a promise about rankings. The word list we flag (click here, here, read more, learn more, this, more, link, continue, details and a bare URL as the text) is ours, so a hit is a prompt to look, not a verdict.
Why does the status check stop at 15 links?
Every status request goes through the same small fetch route that all our tools share, and that route is rate limited per visitor so one page with 400 links cannot crowd everyone else out. Fifteen is our cap: internal targets first, then external, in document order, and the row above the results says how many were left unchecked. The Redirect chain checker takes 50 URLs at a time if you need the rest. Each target is requested once with HEAD (GET when the server refuses HEAD) and redirects are followed up to five hops.
What is the difference between nofollow, sponsored and ugc?
All three tell Google how a link came to be on your page. "sponsored" marks advertisements and paid placements. "ugc" marks user-generated content such as comments and forum posts. "nofollow" is for a link you do not want to vouch for when neither of the other two fits. Google says links with any of these values will generally not be followed, though the target may still be crawled from elsewhere. The tool counts them so you can see whether paid or user links are marked at all; an unqualified external link is a normal editorial link, not a fault.
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