Start with the detail panel on the finding, which says how it was reached: a blocklist match, a judgement by the AI model, or a keyword match. Then ignore it or mark it reviewed in your own report, and use Something wrong with this report? to tell Link Signals. Removal from a blocklist is not something Link Signals can do, because it only reads the lists.
Check the evidence first
| Evidence | How strong | What to do if it looks wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Blocklist (Confirmed) | Strongest | The listing belongs to the list’s maintainers. See below. |
| AI-judged | Medium | The panel says the model judged it. Open the page and decide, then report it if you disagree. |
| Keyword | Weakest | A word match cannot tell topic from intent, so an article about casinos can match. These are Needs review, never Not safe. |
What you can do in Link Signals
- Open the findingRead the reason and the page it was found on. Many findings come from a link that was added by someone else.
- Ignore or review itIn a monitored site, ignore the finding so it stops counting and alerting. In a one-off report, mark it reviewed. The next scan reads the page again, so a review is never taken on trust.
- Report itUse Something wrong with this report? and say which destination you mean and why it is fine. Reports of wrong findings are some of the most useful feedback, though a reply cannot promise a particular outcome.
If a blocklist lists a domain wrongly
The adult, gambling and violence lists come from the public StevenBlack/hosts project and are refreshed by hand. Link Signals cannot add or remove a domain, so a listing in error has to be raised with that project, through its issue tracker. After the next refresh of the lists, the finding goes. Other services keep their own lists, with their own ways to ask for a review, and that sits outside what Link Signals does.
Malware and phishing are not on these lists. They are judged from the page itself, and Link Signals does not check whether a destination is legal.
Where to read more
- Accuracy and limits: where Link Signals can be wrong, and what to do.
- Blocklist sources: where the lists come from, their size and what they leave out.
- False positive: the term, and how it applies to a report.
- Block the Link Signals crawler: how a site owner can stop their pages being requested.
- How accurate is Link Signals?: the wider picture.
Questions
How do I tell which kind of evidence flagged a link?
Open the finding. A blocklist match carries a Confirmed tag, a model judgement says it was judged by the AI classifier, and a keyword match lists the words it matched.
Does Link Signals decide what counts as hate?
It matches a short set of phrases and asks an AI model to judge the page, and a person has the final say on each finding. There is no blocklist for hate sites.
Will blocking the crawler remove a listing?
No. A site whose owner has opted out is not requested, but if its domain is on a blocklist it is still reported from the list alone.
Open your report and use the link on it, so the destination and page are filled in for you.
