A site’s external LinkSignal is a score out of 100 for its outbound (external) links, and for the link-related health of the site itself, right now. This page covers the row that carries the heaviest charge: links that are concealed. The whole metric is described on the LinkSignal overview, and the full set of rules is on the methodology page.
In plain terms, this metric is built only from what Link Signals finds and checks on your pages. It is not linked to any search engine, and it is not PageRank or any third-party authority score. Nothing outside the scan feeds into it.
What this part of your LinkSignal measures
It counts the links on your pages that a visitor is not meant to see, or that show different people different things. There are three kinds:
- Hidden links: links made invisible with styling, such as text pushed off the screen, shrunk to nothing or coloured to match the background.
- Cloaked links: links shown to search engines but not to visitors, or the other way round.
- Script-injected links: links that are not in the page as delivered but are put there by encoded script when the page loads.
Each of these is read as a possible sign of a hack, because a site owner rarely has a reason to hide a link from their own visitors. Learn more about each kind in hidden links, cloaked links and script-injected links.
How it is counted
| Row | Points for each | Limit | Reached at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hidden, cloaked or script-injected links | 6 | 30 | 5 links |
Every site starts at 100. For this row the rule is 6 points each, up to 30: each concealed link takes off 6 points, and the row can never take off more than 30, however many there are. At 6 points a link, the limit is reached at 5 links.
A link is counted once, in one row only. Concealed links share a priority with out of context links, so the two are separated by the way they were found: anything hidden, cloaked or script-injected is counted here, and a link that is merely off-topic is counted in out of context links. A concealed link that also points to a parked page or an unregistered domain is charged in the row for those, which come first in the default order. A concealed link that is also broken or unreachable is not treated as concealed.
A worked example
A site has one hidden link, one link shown only to search engines and one link added by encoded script. That is 3 concealed links, so 3 × 6 = 18 points are lost and the site scores 82.
A site with 7 hidden links would be charged 42 on paper, but the row stops at 30, so it scores 70.
How it appears in your report
At the top of a report, the LinkSignal card shows the score, its band and the three rows costing the most. Open How this is worked out to see every row, how many were found and how many points each cost. Select Hidden, cloaked or script-injected links and the report opens the matching links in the findings.
Further down, the step Out of context links in What to fix, in order lists the detail: how many are hidden with styling, shown only to search engines, and hidden in scripts. Its button opens the same findings list, which holds both concealed and off-topic links, each with the page it was found on.
How to get the points back
- Open each linkNote the page it sits on and the page it points to. Check the page source or the theme and plugin files for where it comes from.
- Find how it got thereCommon routes are a plugin, a theme file or a compromised login. Remove the link and the route, and change the passwords involved. Removing the link alone lets it return.
- Check it has goneRun a re-check of the fixed links. Link Signals reads the page again before calling anything resolved.
- Rescan the siteA rescan shows the new score and how it moved. If you put a link there on purpose, mark it reviewed once you are sure.
- Keep watchingMonitoring checks again on a schedule, so a link that returns is found without waiting for the next manual scan.
What it does not mean
- It does not prove the site was hacked. It shows links that are concealed. Occasionally a widget hides text for a reason, so open each link and check.
- It does not say how search engines treat the links, and it is not a measure of rankings.
Questions
Why do concealed links cost more than broken links?
A broken link is a dead end. A concealed link is usually put there by someone else, so it points to a problem with who has access to the site.
Run a scan and the LinkSignal card shows this row, with the links behind it.
