Every link gets one of seven verdicts. Not safe and Needs review say the destination looks harmful or unrelated. Broken, Investigate, Unreachable and Couldn’t check say what happened when the link was requested. No known issues says the checks found nothing.
A verdict describes the destination on the day it was checked. It is a prompt to look, not a final ruling.
The seven verdicts
| Verdict | Meaning | Typical cause |
|---|---|---|
| Not safe | Confirmed or judged to be harmful content. | The domain is on a blocklist, or the AI analysis judged it unsafe. |
| Needs review | Worth a person’s look, but not confirmed. | A keyword match, an unrelated promotional link, or a hidden link. |
| Investigate | A server error (5xx), even after a retry. | The site may be down or misconfigured. |
| Broken | 404 or 410, even after a retry. | The page was removed or moved. |
| Unreachable | The destination could not be reached at all. | A DNS failure, a refused or timed-out connection, or a certificate problem. |
| Couldn’t check | The site answered but would not let the page be read. | A 401, 403 or 429, a bot check, or too many redirects. |
| No known issues | Nothing in the checks matched. | Not on a blocklist, no keyword hits, not flagged by the model. |
What Confirmed means
Confirmed is the strongest evidence in a report. It means the domain, or a parent domain, is on a blocklist. The other two levels are weaker: AI-judged means a model read the page and the context it was linked from, and Keyword means words in the destination matched. The detail panel shows which one applies.
Links that could not be read are not problems
Couldn’t check is not counted as broken. A 401, 403 or 429, a bot check or a long chain of redirects says the site would not let an automated visitor in. It says nothing about what is on the page, so reporting it as a fault would send you to fix links that are fine. Link Signals retries once with a browser-style user agent and goes no further. Open a few by hand.
Where do the others go? In the report, Broken links, server errors (Investigate), Unreachable and Couldn’t check sit together on the Broken links card, with a number for each. A domain that exists but returns an error is one of these, not an unregistered-domain finding: that badge appears only when the registry confirms nobody holds the domain.
If the other site is down when it runs
Investigate, Unreachable and Couldn’t check are unsettled. A site can be down for an hour, so in monitoring they are looked at again on the next check instead of being trusted for weeks. They are not scored in LinkSignal.
Why “Not checked” appears
Not checked is different from a verdict. It means a request was not made or could not be completed, so the answer is left out and not guessed. Common causes are an owner who has asked not to be requested and a monitoring allowance that has run out.
Where to read more
- Verdicts explained: the order checks run in, the badges, and worked examples.
- How findings are prioritised: what to fix first, which is a separate idea from the verdict.
- Reading your scan report: where each verdict appears.
- Broken links: 404, 410 and server errors in more detail.
Questions
Can a verdict change between two scans?
Yes. A verdict describes the destination on the day it was checked, so a site that was down, a domain that was renewed or a page that was cleaned up can change it. When nothing has changed, a second scan gives the same answer. If a result moves between two scans, the comparison on a rescan shows which recorded detail is different. See rescan and compare.
Why is a link marked Broken when I can open it?
Some sites answer a crawler differently from a person. Link Signals retries once with a browser-style user agent, and a link that still returns 404 or 410 is reported. Check the address in a private window, and look for a redirect the site only applies to browsers.
Do verdicts change if I scan twice?
When nothing has changed, a second scan gives the same answer, because the AI check answers the same way for the same input and the result is reused. If the destination, the page it is linked from or the anchor changes, the link is judged again.
Run a scan and open any finding to see how its verdict was reached.
