Links

The Links report maps how crawled pages connect to destinations. Screpy groups repeated uses of the same target so you can see its status, anchor text, attributes, total usage, and every source page that contains it.

Select the right link inventory

Choose a completed crawl and confirm its scope before interpreting counts. All Links contains every discovered destination. All Issues combines broken responses, empty anchors, nofollow usage, new-tab links, and mail or telephone links into an investigation queue. Some of these are informational and should not be removed simply to make the count zero.

Use Internal and External to separate links controlled by your site from links to another domain. A repeated navigation destination can have thousands of uses but one template owner; a contextual editorial link may appear once and still be commercially important.

Read a destination with its sources

Start with the destination URL, target domain and scheme, response code, and final behavior. Then inspect anchor text, rel, target behavior, usage count, and Source Pages. Open representative sources and verify the rendered link because a CMS field, navigation component, or JavaScript state can generate the same issue across many pages.

Group findings by:

• destination and status;
• source template or URL pattern;
• navigation, footer, body content, image, or interface control;
• internal versus external ownership;
• one-time versus repeated use.

Choose an investigation path

Prioritize link work

Fix broken internal links in primary navigation and high-value content first. Then handle repeated template problems, redirects you control, important external references, and unclear anchors. Prioritize by visitor impact, affected source count, page importance, search visibility, ownership, and confidence in the replacement.

Google can generally crawl standard <a href> links and recommends concise, descriptive anchor text. Important pages should be linked from another discoverable page. See Google's link best practices.

Verify the result

Publish the source-page change, inspect the rendered link, request its destination, and run another crawl with comparable settings. Confirm source pages now point directly to the intended final URL with the correct anchor and attributes. An updated destination does not prove the source link was corrected.

A repeatable link audit workflow

Treat the Links report as a map of relationships, not a list of isolated URLs. Start with All Issues to understand the cleanup, then separate internal links from external links. Internal problems affect navigation, discovery, and the paths users take through your site. External problems usually affect trust and usability, but the destination is outside your control.

For each issue, inspect three levels:

1. Destination level: Does the target return the expected response and content?
2. Source-page level: Which pages contain the link, and how prominent is it?
3. Template level: Is the same link repeated in navigation, footers, product cards, or another shared component?

A single broken link in a global footer can create thousands of observations. Fixing the template is more valuable than editing each source URL separately.

How to interpret changes after a crawl

A falling issue count usually means the cleanup worked, but confirm the reason. The number can also fall because source pages disappeared, became blocked, or were no longer reached. Compare All Links, affected source pages, and the latest crawl scope before calling the result successful.

A rising internal-link count can be healthy when you publish content or improve navigation. It becomes suspicious when it comes from faceted URLs, repeated boilerplate, or accidental sitewide links. Changes should match a known release, content migration, or architecture decision.

Link audit questions to ask

• Does this link help a person continue the task they started?
• Is the destination current, specific, and available?
• Is the anchor understandable without surrounding text?
• Is the issue isolated or generated by a shared template?
• Would removing the link be better than replacing it?

Google's guidance on crawlable links is a useful implementation reference. Use it with Screpy's source-page evidence rather than treating any one filter as a ranking score.

MDN's a element reference documents the link attributes and URL behaviors represented throughout the Screpy Links inventory.