What monitoring does
A scan is a snapshot. Monitoring repeats it for you. You add a sitemap once, choose how often to check, and Link Signals re-reads the site on that schedule, compares what it finds with last time, and emails you about anything new.
You can start it from any finished scan: the Monitor this site button at the top of the report adds the site with your plan’s schedule. If your plan doesn’t include monitoring, the same button starts a 7-day free trial on one site, once. See how the trial works.
| Plan | Sitemap pages crawled | Links per scan | Link checks a month | Monitored sites |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 100 | 50 | 50 | None |
| Starter | 1,000 | 2,000 | 2,000 | None |
| Pro | 10,000 | 12,000 | 12,000 | 15 |
| Scale | 50,000 | 50,000 | 50,000 | 50 |
A plan with “None” in the monitored-sites column can still run scans by hand but doesn’t include monitoring.
What happens, step by step
- You add the sitemapThe address is read before it is saved, so a mistyped one is rejected straight away instead of failing a week later.
- The first checkIt starts within 5 minutes. It reads the pages and checks every outbound link. This first check is a baseline check: it records what is already on the site and doesn’t send an alert for anything it finds. A very large site is read in stages over several checks.
- You get 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 checks read only what changedEach check compares the sitemap with the record from last time and reads only the pages that need it. The table below shows which.
- You are told about what is newA link that is newly flagged, or has moved to a more serious verdict, triggers an alert email. See alert emails.
Which pages are read again
| Page | Read again when |
|---|---|
| A new page | On the next check. |
| A page whose sitemap date changed | On the next check. |
| An unchanged page that has a sitemap date | In a rotating slice, 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 about every 14 days beyond that. |
The rotating slice is about 5% of the site on each check, capped at 2,000 pages, and a different slice each time. Those pages are also compared as a search crawler would see them, so a cloaked link is found even when a page’s date never changes.
What counts against your allowance
Monitoring uses the same monthly link allowance as scans. Only links that need checking are counted: a destination that is new, or whose verdict has aged out after about 30 days, or that was broken, unreachable or otherwise unsettled last time. A link already judged as safe or flagged is reused without being counted. Links flagged because their domain isn’t registered, has expired or is parked are the exception: they are checked on every check, because they can change overnight.
If the allowance runs out, pages are still read, but new links are recorded as not checked yet and are picked up after the allowance resets on the 1st.
What the status on the Monitoring page means
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Check queued | A check is due and starts within 5 minutes. |
| Checking now | A check is running. |
| All clear | The last full check found nothing flagged. |
| N flagged | The last check left N flagged links open. Ignored findings are not counted. |
| Couldn’t check | The sitemap couldn’t be read or the check failed. It is tried again the next day. |
| Paused | You paused it, or your plan no longer covers this site. |
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 doesn’t make findings disappear.
New, worse and gone
Each check compares its flagged links with the previous check. A finding is new if that link wasn’t flagged before, worse if its verdict moved to a more serious one, and gone if it was flagged and no longer is, because the link was removed or now looks fine. Findings you have chosen to ignore are left out of all three.
Questions
Can I run a check right now?
Yes. Use Check now on the Monitoring page. It queues the check, which starts within 5 minutes, and can be used once an hour per site.
What happens if I move to a smaller plan?
Sites beyond the new plan’s limit are paused with a note, and the schedule is reduced to what the plan allows. Nothing is deleted.
Does monitoring put load on my site?
It fetches a handful of pages at a time, and after the first full pass it reads only the pages that changed, plus a small slice.
What happens to the data if I remove a site?
The stored record of its pages and links is deleted. Reports already saved in your history stay there.
How this counts in your LinkSignal
Each monitoring check can change your site’s external LinkSignal, because it records what was found on the pages it read. Linked domains that expire within 30 days are one of the rows, linked domains expiring within 30 days, where the registry publishes a date. The LinkSignal overview lists every row, and how the score is worked out gives the points. LinkSignal is Link Signals’ own metric, worked out only from what this tool finds, and it is not connected to any search engine or third-party score.
Add your sitemap once and Link Signals re-checks it on a schedule.
