Link Checker
Cassian Sentinel™ validates every link on your store and tells you exactly what's broken — and what isn't.
Cassian Sentinel™ systematically tests every link on your store pages — internal links to other pages on your own store, external links to third-party sites, plus images, media, and assets — and classifies each one so you know exactly what needs attention.
Broken links hurt two things: the shopping experience for real visitors who click them and hit a dead end, and your store's credibility with search engines. Cassian Sentinel™ finds them before your customers do.
Link Classifications
| Status | What it means | Affects your score? |
|---|---|---|
| Working (200) | Link is valid. The destination loads correctly. | No — positive signal |
| Redirect (301/302/307/308) | Link redirects to another URL. Informational — not necessarily a problem, but worth reviewing for internal links. | No — informational only |
| Blocked (403/429) | The destination is live but refused Cassian's request — a firewall or rate limit, not a dead link. | No — zero score impact |
| Broken (404/410, other 4xx, DNS or connection failures) | Link goes nowhere. The destination page doesn't exist or can't be reached. | Yes — deducts from Technical Health |
| Server error (500+) | The destination is experiencing errors. May resolve itself. | Partial deduction |
Skipped Social Domains
Cassian Sentinel™ maintains a list of domains known to reject automated link checkers — LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, Pinterest, and TikTok. Links to these domains are skipped entirely: they are never requested, don't appear in your results, and aren't included in any counts. This avoids false positives from platforms that always block bots.
Blocked is different: it means a destination on some other domain responded with a live 403 (forbidden) or 429 (rate limited). The site exists and is up — it just declined the automated request. Blocked links carry no score penalty and require no action.
Blocked links have zero score impact. You can safely ignore them — Cassian Sentinel™ already has.
What Gets Checked by Plan
Cassian crawls your store breadth-first starting from your homepage — the pages closest to your homepage (navigation, collections, featured products) are reached first, up to your plan's page limit. Every link, image, media file, and asset found on a crawled page is checked.
| Plan | Pages crawled | Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Inspector | Homepage, plus every link and asset on it | Weekly |
| Analyst | 20 pages | Weekly |
| Protector | 100 pages | Daily |
| Guardian | 200 pages | Daily |
| Prime | 500 pages | Daily |
| Enterprise | 500 pages | Daily |
Link checking also runs after each scan — unless a successful check already ran in the last 12 hours, in which case it's skipped to avoid redundant work. Very large checks stop after 15 minutes of crawling and report partial results.
How to Enable Link Checker
Go to Sites in the sidebar and select your store.
Click Setup.
Toggle Link Checker to ON.
The first link check runs within 24 hours, or after your next scan.
How It Affects Your Cassian Score™
Broken links deduct from the Technical Health category of your Cassian Score™, weighted by severity:
| What's broken | Severity |
|---|---|
| Internal link (404 on your own store) | High |
| Image or media file (video, PDF, audio) | Medium |
| Server error (500+) | Medium |
| External link (404 on a third-party site) | Low |
Each category is capped at 50 counted issues, so a runaway problem on a very large site can't crater your score beyond what's already decisive. Broken internal links are the highest priority to fix — a visitor clicking an internal product or collection link and landing on a 404 page is a direct conversion killer.
Redirects and blocked links carry no score penalty. Internal redirects are reported as informational only.
Where to See Link Data
Sidebar → Links shows the full link checker dashboard:
- KPI cards: total links checked, working, broken, redirecting, blocked
- A filterable results table with: link URL, status, source page, and destination URL
- Filter by status to focus on what needs action
Main dashboard → Links card shows a compact summary with broken link count and last check time.
Stored results are trimmed to the 500 most useful rows — everything that needs attention first (broken, blocked, redirects, errors), plus a sample of up to 50 working links.
If your Links card shows broken internal links, go to Sidebar → Links, filter by Broken, and check the Source Page column to find which page contains each broken link.
New broken-link incidents notify through your configured channels. During quiet hours, link alerts (warning severity) are held until the window ends, and acknowledged or snoozed incidents don't re-notify — see Alerts & notifications.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why don't my Instagram and Facebook links appear in the results? Links to major social platforms (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok) are skipped entirely — those platforms always reject automated checkers, so testing them would only produce false positives. They're never requested and aren't counted in your results. Your social links are almost certainly fine.
I see blocked links — should I worry? No. A blocked link means the destination is live but answered with a 403 (forbidden) or 429 (rate limited) — it declined the automated request, which is common for sites with strict firewalls. Your link is not broken, and your score is not affected.
A link shows as broken but it loads fine when I click it. Why? This can happen when a page is temporarily unavailable at the exact moment Cassian checks it. Trigger a manual scan to re-check. If the link consistently shows as working when you click it but broken in Cassian, it's possible the destination requires a specific browser header or login state that automated checking can't replicate — treat it as informational.
Does Cassian check links in my footer, navigation, and product descriptions? Yes — all links found during the crawl are checked, regardless of where they appear on the page. Navigation links, footer links, inline content links in product descriptions and blog posts, and image links are all included.
How do I know which page a broken link is on? The Links table shows a Source Page column for every link, identifying the exact page where the broken link was found. Click the source page URL to open it directly.
I fixed a broken link. When will the status update? The next link check run will pick up the fix. On Protector+ plans, checks run daily; on Analyst and Inspector, weekly. Checks also run after scans, though a check is skipped if a successful one already ran within the last 12 hours.
My store has 800 products — will Cassian check every product page? Pages are crawled breadth-first from your homepage up to your plan's page limit. On Guardian (200 pages), that means your homepage, navigation, collection pages, and the products they link to are covered first — deep pages many clicks from the homepage may not be reached on every run.
Can I see a history of link check results? The Links page shows the most recent check results. Historical trend data (e.g., "how many broken links did I have last month?") is on the roadmap.
What does a redirect (301/302) on an internal link mean — should I fix it? Internal redirects are informational and don't affect your score. They add a small amount of latency for visitors and can confuse search engines if chained, so for internal links it's worth updating the source link to point directly to the final destination URL when practical. For external links, redirects are usually fine — the destination site has simply moved its content.