Payday loan links in your scan report

What the Payday loans list means

The Payday loans card appears when at least one outbound link on the scanned site leads to a page judged to be about payday or similar high-cost short-term loans. The list behind Review these links holds those links only. A link can belong to more than one category, so it may also appear under another card.

There is no blocklist for loans. A link lands here in one of two ways:

• Word match. The destination’s title, description or page text contains “payday loan” or “payday loans”, “cash advance”, “instant approval loan” or “instant approval loans”, or “no credit check loan” or “no credit check loans”. On its own this is graded Needs review.
• AI analysis. The destination is read together with the page that links to it and judged to be a payday-loan page. This can be graded Not safe. See verdicts explained.

When a loan link is legitimate

• A regulated lender linked from a money-advice or personal-finance site that means to mention it.
• A consumer charity or a news article warning about payday lending.
• A guide that explains what a cash advance on a credit card is. The phrase matches the word list even though the page is educational.
• A comparison site where lenders are the subject.

These come back as Needs review, not Not safe, and when the page carrying the link is about money or lending no Out of context chip is added. Link Signals does not check whether a lender is authorised by a regulator.

When it is unwanted

A gardening blog, a charity events page or a restaurant’s “Contact” page linking to “Instant payday loans, no credit check” did not choose that link. It is usually promotional spam: a paid placement slipped in by a contractor, a comment or guest post that was left in place, or code injected after a compromise. If the link is concealed, the hidden links page explains the Hidden, Cloaked and Hidden in script chips.

Why it matters

• Reputation. High-cost lending aimed at people in difficulty reflects badly on a site that appears to recommend it.
• Search. Unrelated outbound links of this kind can weaken a page, and search engines may treat paid placements that are not marked as a breach of their guidelines.
• Advertising. Some ad networks and affiliate programmes restrict sites that promote high-cost credit.
• Visitors. Someone who clicks may hand personal and bank details to a lender you never vetted.

In your report

The card is titled Payday loans and carries a Medium risk chip, one step below malware, adult, pharma and drugs. It is shown only when something was found. Its four figures are Flagged links, On a blocklist (always zero, as there is no list), Off-topic for their page and Hidden from visitors. The suggested action reads: remove the links to payday-loan sites unless you chose them, or mark them nofollow.

Review these links opens the findings table filtered to this category, with columns Priority, Destination, Signals and Found on. The Signals column shows the chip loans, plus Out of context when the source page is not about the subject, concealment chips where they apply, and Followed when nothing stops the link passing ranking credit. A link marked nofollow, sponsored or ugc shows how it is marked instead. Choose a row to see the anchor text. See finding priorities for how Out of context findings rank above plain category cards.

What to do

1. Look at the destinationOpen it in a private window and see what is actually offered, and by whom.
2. Find the link on your pageOpen the page named in Found on and search for the anchor text. Check comments, widgets and any sponsored or guest content.
3. Choose: keep, mark or removeIf you chose the link, keep it and mark the finding as reviewed. If it is paid, mark it rel="sponsored" as well. If you did not choose it, remove it. Nofollow is an option, but it does not stop visitors clicking through.
4. If you did not add it, find out who didCheck recent edits, user accounts, plugins and any agency or freelancer with access. If the link was injected, follow After a WordPress hack.
5. Check the rest of the listOne loan link is often one of several. Review each row under the card.

Common mistakes

• Marking an unwanted link nofollow when it should be removed.
• Leaving a paid link unmarked. Sponsored content should say so.
• Fixing one page when the link comes from a footer or widget that runs on every page.
• Assuming a lender is fine because it is well known. The report concerns what the link is doing on your page.

How to confirm it is fixed

Run a re-check from the report once the changes are live. It reads only the pages your flagged links are on, so it is quick, and it shows whether the loan links still appears. Marking a finding as reviewed is a note to yourself, not a fix: the next scan reads the page again and calls the finding resolved only when the link is gone or no longer flagged. If it is still there, it comes back as Still flagged. On a monitored site, later scans keep watching for it to return.

How this counts in your LinkSignal

A link to a payday lender is flagged as risky or unsafe, and that is what links that need review counts in your site’s external LinkSignal. If the same link is hidden, or sits on a page it does not fit, it is counted once in the hidden, cloaked and script-injected links or out of context links row instead. 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.