You add a site’s sitemap once and choose how often to check. The first check records what is already on the site, which is the baseline and sends no alerts. After that, each check reads only the pages that need it, compares what it finds with last time, and emails you about anything newly flagged or more serious.
What happens, in order
- You add the sitemapIt is read before it is saved, so a mistyped address is refused straight away. The Monitor this site button on a finished report adds it using the sitemap you scanned.
- The baseline checkIt starts within 5 minutes, reads the pages and checks every outbound link. A very large site is read in stages over several checks, and all of them count as the baseline.
- A “now watching” emailWhen the first full pass finishes, one email says how many pages and links were checked and what is flagged at that point.
- Later checksEach check reads the pages that changed, plus a small rotating slice, and compares the flagged links with the record. A link is new, worse or gone.
Which pages are read again
| Page | Read again when |
|---|---|
| A new page, or one whose sitemap date changed | On the next check |
| An unchanged page with a sitemap date | In a rotating slice of about 5% of the site, and in a full pass about every 30 days |
| A page with no sitemap date, on a site of up to 20,000 pages | On every check |
| A page with no sitemap date, on a larger site | About every 7 days up to 200,000 pages, and every 14 days beyond that |
Wrong sitemap dates make monitoring slower, not wrong. See check your sitemap dates.
Schedule, plans and cost
- Plans: monitoring is included on Pro and Scale. A free account can start one 7-day trial on one site, once.
- Schedule: paid plans check weekly, and some sites can be checked daily where the plan allows it. Changing the schedule re-times the next check from the last one.
- Check now: queues a check that starts within 5 minutes, and can be used once an hour per site.
- Allowance: monitoring uses the same monthly link allowance as scans, but only links that need checking are counted. A link already judged is reused for about 30 days.
- Linked domains: Link Signals also remembers when the domains you link to run out, and emails once at 30 days and once at 7 days before.
Questions
Does monitoring read pages that are not in my sitemap?
No. It reads only the pages your sitemap lists, so a spam page created outside the sitemap is not seen. Keep the sitemap complete if you want those covered.
What happens if the sitemap cannot be read during a check?
The site shows Couldn’t check and is tried again. If only part of a sitemap can be read, nothing is removed from the record and the check is tried again in a few hours, so a temporary fault does not make findings vanish.
Can I pause monitoring without losing anything?
Yes. Pause stops the checks and Resume queues one. Remove is different: it deletes the stored record of the site’s pages and links, so adding it again starts a new baseline.
Does monitoring use my monthly link checks?
Yes, from the same allowance as scans. If it runs out, pages are still read, but new links are recorded as not checked yet and picked up after the allowance resets on the 1st.
Run a free scan, then try monitoring on that site for 7 days.
