Understand internal link and site architecture checks

TechDash uses capped destination probes and a graph of links among Monitored Pages. These checks matter for user paths, crawl discovery, and regression detection. A pass can mean unchanged, no captured URLs, no qualifying failure, or a healthy relationship only inside the monitored set. It does not prove complete site architecture or SEO quality.

Destination errors and redirects

After a successful crawl, TechDash captures up to 100 unique destinations, reduced to 40 under backlog. Links to error pages is Warning and fails in absolute state when a captured internal destination has a concrete broken status (for example 404 or 500), or an external destination returns 404 or 410. Rate limits (429), auth or WAF blocks (401/403), timeouts, and soft overload (503) are treated as crawl noise and do not open this incident. Links that redirect is Advisory and fails for any internal first-hop 3xx, or an external 3xx whose Location host differs from the linked host, excluding known social and share hosts.

Both pass when no URLs were captured or no captured row meets the trigger. Evidence lists destination errors or first-hop redirects. Probes do not follow redirects, and capped capture plus ignored blocks, challenges, timeouts, rate limits, and ambiguous failures limit coverage. Intentional external tracking hops and internal migration redirects can be benign, but direct internal links are more efficient.

Restore or update broken targets, link directly to intended internal destinations, and investigate unexpected off-host redirects. Check & Verify recovers when a later crawl captures no qualifying rows.

Link growth, counts, pagination, and facets

Unusual external link growth is Warning. It counts unique off-origin HTTP document links while excluding common asset extensions. It fails from zero at 20 or more links; from a positive baseline it fails at three times the prior count or at least 20 additional links. Evidence includes counts and newly added destinations. A pass means the threshold was not crossed, not that outbound links are trustworthy. Editorial resource pages can be benign; hidden spam or compromised templates can be severe.

Internal link count changed is Advisory. At finalization it fails when any monitored page's outbound internal-link array length differs from its prior snapshot. It passes with no prior comparison or equal counts. Evidence lists paths, not added or removed edges, so equal counts can conceal substitutions and changed counts do not show which links moved.

Pagination crawl path broken is Warning and fails when a page had one or more extracted pagination hrefs and now has none. Facet URL emission spiked is Advisory and fails only from a positive baseline when parameterized facet links are at least three times the prior count and at least 20 higher. Their evidence shows hrefs or counts; TechDash does not crawl the emitted facet space. Infinite scroll, deliberate pagination removal, or a new filter can be benign only if crawlable discovery and duplicate control remain intentional.

Inspect rendered anchors and the release. Remove injected links, restore crawlable pagination, and constrain unintended facet emission. Run Check & Verify; finalization checks recover only after every enabled Monitored Page has a current snapshot.

Monitored-page graph

The graph includes only extracted internal links whose destination path matches a Monitored Page.

• Monitored page became orphaned is Warning. With more than one monitored page, it fails whenever a monitored path has zero graph inbound links, including the first complete graph. It passes if each path has an inbound edge or only one page is monitored.
• Internal inbound links dropped is Warning. It fails only when a path had more than zero inbound edges in the prior graph and now has zero. It passes without that complete loss.
• High-value anchor text changed is Advisory. After a baseline with at least one prior non-empty inbound anchor, it fails when the sorted multiset of anchor text into a monitored destination changes. Evidence lists before and after wording.

These findings can affect discovery and topical context, but graph edges are not a full-site crawl. A reported orphan may receive links from unmonitored URLs, JavaScript interactions, sitemaps, or external sites; a pass can miss those sources and any destination outside the set. Intentional navigation or wording changes can be benign.

Add important hubs and destinations to monitoring, inspect the actual rendered <a href> elements, and restore useful links or descriptive wording where accidental. Verify after a complete recrawl and finalization.

Possible page retirement

Possible unintentional page retirement is Warning. It fails when at least two current signals agree: link isolation, absence from a currently usable sitemap, noindex or canonicalization elsewhere, or a soft-404 heuristic. Link isolation requires zero inbound edges and, when prior graph data exists, prior inbound support. Google Search Console loss is not required.

Evidence lists affected paths, but not the two contributing signals, so inspect each source before acting. An intentional retirement is benign if redirects, status, sitemap, links, canonical, and index directives form a coherent policy. For an active page, restore at least the broken structural signals. Check & Verify and complete finalization must reduce the agreement below two; confirm intentional retirement manually before resolving.

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