The seven verdicts
| Verdict | Meaning | Typical cause |
|---|---|---|
| Not safe | The destination is confirmed or judged to be harmful content. | The domain is on a blocklist, or the AI analysis judged it unsafe. |
| Needs review | Something is wrong enough that a person should look, but it isn’t confirmed. | A keyword match, an unrelated promotional link, or a hidden link. |
| Investigate | The destination returned a server error (HTTP 5xx), even after a retry. | The site may be down or misconfigured. |
| Broken | The destination returned 404 or 410, even after a retry. | The page was removed or moved. |
| Unreachable | Link Signals could not reach the destination at all. | A DNS failure, a connection that was refused or timed out, or a certificate problem. |
| Couldn’t check | The site answered, but wouldn’t let Link Signals read the page. | It refused automated requests (HTTP 401, 403 or 429), put up a bot check, or sent more redirects than could be followed. The site is there; what is on the page is unknown. |
| No known issues | Nothing in the checks matched. | Not on a blocklist, no keyword hits, and not flagged by the model. |
Confidence
Each finding also records how it was reached, and the detail panel shows it.
| Level | How it was reached | What the panel shows |
|---|---|---|
| Confirmed | The domain, or a parent domain, is on a blocklist. | “On the adult / gambling domain blocklist” with a Confirmed tag |
| AI-judged | A model read the page and the context it was linked from. | “Judged by the AI classifier…” |
| Keyword | Words or domain terms in the destination matched. | “Matched:” followed by the words |
The order the checks run in
- Fetch the destination like a browser. If it returns an error (HTTP 400 or higher), try once more with a browser-style user agent. A 5xx error waits one second first.
- Follow redirects the way a browser does, up to 10, keeping any cookies the site sets along the way, because many sites bounce a first visit through a login or consent address. A chain that never ends is Couldn’t check.
- If the domain is on a blocklist, the verdict is Not safe straight away, even if the page returned an error.
- A 404 or 410 is Broken. A 5xx is Investigate.
- Any other error, such as 401, 403 or 429, or a bot check, is Couldn’t check, unless the title or description already contains risky words, in which case it is Needs review.
- If there was no response at all, a blocklisted or risky-looking domain name is still flagged. Otherwise the link is Unreachable.
- Otherwise the page text is checked by keywords and, when AI analysis is on, by the model, and the verdicts above are assigned.
Badges that sit beside a verdict
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Out of context | The destination is in a risky category the page carrying the link is not about. See out-of-context links. |
| Hidden | The link is hidden from visitors with inline styles. See hidden links. |
| Cloaked | The link appeared only when the page was requested as a search crawler, or as a visitor from a search. See cloaked links. |
| Hidden in script | A script writes the link into the page from an encoded string. See script-written links. |
| Not registered | The destination domain isn’t registered, so anyone can take it. See unregistered domains. |
| Expired | The destination domain’s registration has expired and the registry shows it has stopped, or it is lapsing. See unregistered domains. |
| Parked | The destination is a parking or for-sale page. See parked domains. |
| New domain | The destination domain was registered in the last 30 days. See new domains. |
| Category chips | The category the destination was matched to, such as gambling or pharma. |
| HTTP status | Shown when the destination returned an error code. |
Worked examples
The verdict is the end of a short chain of evidence, and it is easier to see in a few cases than to describe in general. These three are made up, but each follows the rules above.
A link on a gardening blog to a casino
The destination’s domain is on the gambling blocklist, so the check stops there. The verdict is Not safe, with a Confirmed tag. Because the page carrying the link is about gardening and not gambling, the finding also gets the Out of context badge, and its reason reads “Out of context” rather than “Domain is on the gambling blocklist”. If the link is also hidden with an inline style, the Hidden badge is added and the finding moves up the report.
Out of context: “Spring pruning” links to gambling content (hidden link)
/blog/spring-pruning · Anchor text “garden tools”A link to a retailer that answers 403
A large shop refuses the first request, and Link Signals tries once more with a browser-style user agent. It still gets a 403. Nothing in the title or description contains risky words, so the verdict is Couldn’t check. That is not a problem with the link. The report adds what is known about the domain, such as how long it has been registered and that it is on no blocklist we use, so you can decide whether to open it yourself.
Wouldn’t let us read the page (HTTP 403). The site is there, but we couldn’t check what is on it. The domain has been registered since 2004 and isn’t on any blocklist we use
/guides/pruning · Anchor text “our favourite secateurs”A link to a domain that has expired
The old partner site still answers, and its page looks harmless, so the page checks come back clean. Then the registry details are read. The registration ran out last month, and the registry now shows the domain as stopped, so the result is raised from clean to Needs review with the Expired badge. A date that has only just passed, on a domain the registry still lists as active, would not be flagged: that is usually a renewal grace period, and the domain is listed with those about to expire. The same applies to a very new domain, and to a parked page. A finding that was already flagged for another reason keeps its verdict and gains the badge.
Why some results change between scans
A verdict describes the destination on the day it was checked. Sites go down for an hour, a firewall rule changes, a domain is renewed, a page is cleaned up. That is why Investigate, Unreachable and Couldn’t check are treated as unsettled: in monitoring they are looked at again on the next check instead of being trusted for weeks, as a settled verdict is. If a link moves from Unreachable to No known issues between two scans, the likeliest explanation is a temporary fault, not an error in either scan.
When nothing has changed, a second scan gives the same answer. The AI check is set to answer the same way every time for the same input, and its answer is kept and reused for as long as the destination’s address, title, description and risky words, the page the link is on, the anchor text and how the link is marked are all the same. If any of those change, the link is judged again. So a link that was flagged does not drop out of the report, or show as resolved, just because the check was run twice.
Which verdicts to act on first
- Not safe with a Confirmed tag: open the page the link is on, remove the link or ask the editor who added it, and check how it got there.
- Needs review with a Hidden, Cloaked or Hidden in script badge: treat as a possible compromise and read the guide for after a hack.
- Broken: fix or remove it. It costs you nothing in safety, but visitors see a dead end.
- Investigate and Unreachable: look again in a day. If they persist, the link is as good as broken.
- Couldn’t check: open a few by hand. Most are large sites that refuse automated visitors.
Questions
Is “No known issues” the same as safe?
No. It means the checks found nothing: the domain is on no list, the page text matched no keywords and the model, when used, had no concern. A new site that avoids the words we match will pass. That is why the label is worded as it is.
Why is a blocked site not called a problem?
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. Reporting that as a fault would send you to fix links that are fine.
Can a verdict be wrong?
Yes. Keyword matches in particular can pick up an article about a topic rather than a page promoting it, which is why a keyword-only match is Needs review and not Not safe. See accuracy and limits.
Can I mark a verdict as dealt with?
Yes. You can mark a finding reviewed to track your progress, or ignore it so that monitoring stops counting it and alerting on it. Neither changes what Link Signals found.
In your report
A verdict is the word attached to one link. In the report it appears in two places. In the Findings table, the Priority column shows the link’s priority chip, such as 5 Needs review, in place of the verdict word, with a red Not safe chip beside it when the verdict is Not safe. Links that have no priority, such as Investigate, Unreachable and Couldn’t check, show their verdict label with a coloured dot. The detail panel always opens with the verdict label, and a Confirmed tag when the domain is on a blocklist.
The Needs review card
The Needs review card on the Overview tab is the catch-all priority. By default it carries an amber Priority 5 chip and always comes last, because it takes whatever was flagged as risky or unsafe and did not match one of the first four priorities.
| Number on the card | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Not safe | Links in this priority with the Not safe verdict: a blocklist match, or a page judged harmful. Red. |
| Need a decision | Links in this priority with the Needs review verdict. Amber. |
| Registered recently | Links in this priority whose domain is new. See new domains. Amber. |
If any link is Not safe, the advice is to remove it, or mark it nofollow if that is not possible, and then decide on the rest. Otherwise it asks you to open each link that needs review, keep the ones you chose and remove or mark nofollow the rest. Review these links opens the Findings tab on its Needs review tab. The small button beside it, labelled “What the verdicts mean”, opens this page in a new tab, so the report stays where it is.
Where the other verdicts show up
| Verdict | Where it appears in the report |
|---|---|
| Not safe and Needs review | In the priority their finding belongs to: parked, not registered, out of context, or the Needs review priority. The Findings table also has views for the Not safe and Needs review verdicts themselves. |
| Broken | The Broken links (404) card, Priority 4 by default, and the Broken (404) tab. |
| Investigate | The “Server errors” number on the Broken links card. It has no priority of its own, because an error does not say that a link is wrong. |
| Unreachable and Couldn’t check | The “Unreachable” and “Couldn’t check” numbers on the same card. The card turns grey and reads Worth a look when only server errors, unreachable or blocked links are present. |
| No known issues | Counted in “links checked” at the top of the Findings tab but not listed. Links with nothing wrong are counted, not stored. |
The coloured bar above the Findings table shows the priorities by size. The legend buttons beneath it open each priority, and an Other button opens the Broken & errors view for findings that have no priority.
How this counts in your LinkSignal
Verdicts feed your site’s external LinkSignal through the priorities. Not safe and Needs review links count under links that need review unless a more specific row applies, and Broken links count under broken links. Investigate, Unreachable and Couldn’t check are not scored, and neither is No known issues. The LinkSignal overview explains every row. 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.
Run a scan and see each verdict with its evidence.
