Links status analytics

Links status is a sub-feature under the Analytics section of Document360. This feature is a broken link checker that helps validate and monitor all internal, external, and media file links on the knowledge base. It allows you to fix bad/broken links to improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and enhance the reader experience.

With the following validations, you can run the link validation at a workspace and language level.

1. Scheduled validation

2. Manual validation

3. Article level validation

NOTE

For manual and scheduled validation, all the links at the project level are analyzed to check for broken, unknown, or working links.

Accessing the Links status analytics page

To view the Link status analytics, from the Knowledge base portal,

1. Navigate to Analytics () in the left navigation bar in the Knowledge base portal.

2. In the left navigation pane, click Link status.

   

Links status overview page

This page contains all the necessary data regarding the links used in your Knowledge base (selected workspace and language). The page has two sections: Links status tiles and Links list.

1. Links status tiles

Links classification

Current state

Broken link/image

When a broken link or an image file is accessed:

2. Links list

The list of all links used in the entire workspace is displayed below the Links status section. The following information about the links used is available.

NOTE

If you have deleted an article after the validation and the report has been generated, the article is grayed out. A trash icon appears next to the article name.

Filters for Links list

The Filter button at the top of the Links list section is useful when you have more links. You can filter links based on four parameters: the Source, Visibility, Link type, and Status.

Once you have selected the filter, click Apply.

You can also apply filters directly by clicking on the Link status tile you prefer to view. For example, when you click on the Broken or External link status tile, the links with the link type or status are displayed in the list.

Export links list analytics data

On the Links status page, click Export CSV to export and download the Link analytics as a CSV file to your local storage.

Actions and controls

Above the Links status sections, you can find the controls and data regarding the link analytics.

The validation types are Scheduled, Manual, and Article level.

b. Report date

• The date of the reports generated will be loaded here. The validation reports are named based on the generation date.

• When you hover over the info () icon adjacent to the Report data dropdown, you can view the next or upcoming scheduled link validation date.

  NOTE

  Scheduled link validation runs every 7 days hence only the latest weekly data is shown.

c. Manage links

• This button opens the Manage links panel.

• This panel contains information about all the links used, and also those which are Ignored or Included in the validations under respective tabs.

d. Validate links

• This button initiates the Manual link validation at the project level.

• When you click Validate links, a confirmation prompt alerts you with the number of manual validations left for the month.

• To proceed, click Confirm.

e. Manual validation usage

• This status bar shows your project's available Manual validation limit as per your project plan. The limit resets every month.

• The link status validation limit applies to both internal and external links.

• Customers of all price tiers can opt for an increase in the link validation limit anytime, based on their requirement, for a nominal charge.

• For additional information, contact our support team.

f. Link analytics usage

This status bar shows the stats of the link limit used out of the total limit for your project.

NOTE

The link validation limit for the plans that support analytics on link status are:

Business plan - 5000 links

Enterprise plan - 10000 links

Links analytics limit exceeded

When the links count is higher than the total count of links limited for your project, the Links analytics limit exceeded text appears instead of the Link analytics usage.

• When the link analytics limit is exceeded, and the links validation (both Scheduled and Manual validation) takes place, only the links under the total given limit are validated.

• The extra links that exceed the limit are not validated. Article-level validation is also not possible for those links.

  For example, your total link limit is 10000, but the total link count in your project is 10500. Only the first 10000 links are validated when you perform the links validation. The recently added 500 links are not validated.

• To validate all the links in your project, contact our support team to increase the limit for your project.

Link validation

You can perform link validation at a workspace and language level in the following ways,

1. Scheduled validation

2. Manual validation

3. Article level validation

NOTE

For manual and scheduled validation, all the links at the project level are analyzed to check for broken, unknown, or working links.

1. Scheduled validation

This is an automated link validation that runs on a Schedule, based on your plan tier.

Steps to perform schedule validation

1. On the Knowledge base portal, click the Analytics () icon in the left navigation bar.

2. Click Links status on the left navigation pane.

3. The Links status overview page appears.

4. From the Validation type drop-down at the top, select the Scheduled validation (which is the default selection for your projects).

5. You can find the recently generated scheduled link validation.

6. If you want to look into any previous reports, from the Report date drop-down select the report date you wish to view.

2. Manual validation

Steps to perform manual validation

1. On the Knowledge base portal, click the Analytics () icon in the left navigation bar.

2. Click Links status on the left navigation pane.

3. The Links status overview page appears.

4. From the Validation type drop-down at the top, select Manual validation.

5. The latest Manual validation report list will appear.

6. Click Validate links at the top right to perform a new manual validation.

   NOTE

   The analytics report for links is generated every 24 hours (UTC 00:00). If you run consecutive Manual validations within 24 hours, the already run manual validation reports are overwritten with the latest validation data. Once generated, data cannot be retrieved.

7. Once the validation is complete, you will receive a mail on your registered email, and you can view the analytics report on the overview page.

   NOTE

   Only team member roles with the Validate link analytics permission can perform link validations.

3. Article level validation

When choosing the Article level validation from the Validation type drop-down, you can view the article/category-page link validations you have already run. This overview page will be empty if you haven't validated links at the article/category page level.

Validate links at the article/category-page level

Manage links

Click Manage links on the Links status overview page.

The Manage links overview page will appear.
This section provides a high-level view of all the top metrics in the broken links.

• Search - You can search for a specific URL.

• Link type - Refers to whether the link is an External or Internal URL.

• Dependency - The number of times the link has been referenced in the Knowledge base articles.

• Status - To choose to see if a link is Ignored or Included.

Add links to Ignore/Include list

1. In the Manage links panel, select the checkbox for the links you wish to ignore or include.

2. In the status column, you can set the status to Ignored or Included from the dropdown.

   (or)

3. Select the checkbox of the desired link of which you wish to change the status.

4. Click on the Ignore option available above the links list.

   The links that are set to the Included status will be displayed in the Included tab, and the links set to the Ignored status will be displayed under the Ignored tab.

   

Export

On the Manage links page, click Export CSV above the links list. The exported file will be downloaded in .csv format to your local storage.

Troubleshooting

Working links appear as broken in the Link status report

Document360 enforces a 5-second validation timeout for link verification. If a request exceeds this limit, the system may flag the link as Unknown or Broken. Even if the link is functional, it may be incorrectly marked as broken due to the timeout restriction.

Steps to resolve:

1. Manually check the URL

   1. Open the link in a browser to confirm if it loads correctly.

   2. If the page loads, the link may have been incorrectly flagged as broken.

2. Validate the link using Postman

   3. Open Postman and create a new request tab.

   4. Enter the URL and select the GET method.

   5. Click Send to check the response status.

3. Interpret the HTTP response status

   6. If the response is 200 OK, the link is functional.

   7. If the response code is anything other than 200, the link might be broken.

Some of the important status codes are: