Baseline check

A baseline is a reference point. In monitoring, the baseline check is the first time the whole site is read and every outbound link judged. It sets the picture of how the site stands today, so every later check can be compared against it and report only what is different.

Why it matters

Without a baseline, every link already on your site would arrive as a new alert. A site with a few hundred links, a handful of which are old or flagged, would flood your inbox on the first day with problems that have existed for years. That would be noise, and it would teach you to ignore the emails you most need to read.

What happens during one

Link Signals reads the whole site once, stores the verdict for each outbound link, and sends no alerts during that pass. The check starts within 5 minutes of adding the site. A very large site is read in stages over several checks, and all of them count as the baseline. Findings that were already there appear in the report and in the first summary email, which tells you how many pages and links were checked and what is flagged at that point.

What happens afterwards

Each later check compares its flagged links with the record. A finding is new if the link wasn’t flagged before, worse if its verdict moved to a more serious one, and gone if it no longer applies. Alerts are sent for the first two. Findings you have ignored are left out of all three.

Common misunderstandings

• No alert during the baseline does not mean nothing was found. Open the report to see what was already flagged.
• A baseline is not repeated every week. It is the first pass only, though pages are read again on a schedule.
• The baseline cannot say when an old problem arrived. It can only say it was there from the start.

The monitoring schedule is explained in how monitoring works, and the emails in alert emails.