How Rankbank keeps watch

A link swap is only worth something while the link is still there. Pages get rewritten, articles get pruned, a redesign drops a paragraph, a site quietly adds a noindex tag. None of that is usually malice, and all of it costs you the thing you traded for. So Rankbank checks.

The first check

The moment the hosting side presses It's live, the link enters checking. The status reads "It's live. We're checking the page to confirm the link is really there." and the badge shows Live · checking. The Checks panel says "Not checked yet — the first check runs within the hour."

The check itself fetches the live page and looks for four things: that a link to the agreed destination is on the page, that the visible words match the anchor that was agreed, that the page loaded properly, and that it is still indexable by Google. It uses the same validator the guest post module uses for its live checks, so a link earned through a guest post and a link earned through a swap are held to the same standard.

When it passes, the status becomes Live and checked: "Live and checked — the link is on the page, pointing where it should." The requester is notified with "Your link went live — {page} now carries your link. We'll keep checking it stays there."

The frozen numbers

The first time a link is confirmed healthy, Rankbank takes a snapshot of the hosting domain and never changes it. On the request page it reads as a single line: "When this link went live: authority 41/100, 2,300 sites linking to it, spam score 2." The ledger repeats a shorter version on each row: "Authority N/100 when it went live · M sites linking to it".

Those numbers are deliberately frozen. A domain's authority moves around, and a link acquired from a strong site in March is not retroactively worth less because that site had a bad August. What you want to know later is what the link was worth when you got it, and whether the site has moved since. The live metrics panel above shows today's figures, the frozen line shows the day it went live, and comparing the two is the useful act.

The rhythm

Checks run on a schedule that reacts to what it finds.

A healthy link is re-checked about every seven days. That is often enough to catch a removal within a week and rare enough that nobody's server notices.

A link with a real problem, such as a missing link or changed anchor, moves to roughly daily. Something is wrong and the useful question is whether it is still wrong.

A link whose page simply failed to load is looked at again within a couple of hours. This one is a deliberate piece of restraint. A page that times out once has not lost your link; it has had a bad moment. Rankbank keeps the previous status, looks again soon, and tells nobody. Only a genuine "the link is not in this page" verdict flips a link to missing.

Only changes are worth telling you about

A link that has been healthy for eight months does not need a notification every seven days confirming it is still healthy, and a link that has just vanished needs exactly one. So notifications fire on transitions, not on checks.

When something changes for the worse you get "A placed link changed or disappeared", marked as needing action: "A link your partner placed has changed — {summary} We'll keep checking; you may want to ask them about it." When a link recovers, or goes healthy for the first time, you get "Your link went live". In between, silence means everything is as you left it.

Notifications are in-app, on the bell. See how Rankbank tells you things.

What each finding means

The Checks panel shows the last check as "Last checked {date and time} — {summary}", and the summary is written in plain English.

• "The link is on {url}, pointing where it should." Everything is as agreed.
• "We can't find your link on {url} any more." The page loaded and the link is not in it. This is the one that sets the status to Link missing.
• "The link on {url} is there, but the words changed from "{anchor}"." Still linked, different anchor text. Sometimes an innocent edit, sometimes a deliberate weakening.
• "The link on {url} now points somewhere else." The link survived, the destination did not.
• "{url} didn't load when we checked." Temporary until proven otherwise. Nobody is alarmed on the first occurrence.
• "{url} is no longer indexable by Google, so the link passes nothing on." The page carries a noindex instruction. The link is visibly there and worth nothing to search engines, which is why it is called out rather than counted as healthy.
• "{url} now redirects somewhere else." The page you agreed on now sends visitors elsewhere.

Any of these show up in the ledger as an amber badge, and on the overview they land in Needs attention ("A mismatch or monitoring failure needs looking at.").

When a link goes missing

Start by looking, not by writing. Open the page yourself. Occasionally you will find that the link is fine and the page has started blocking automated visitors, in which case the finding will be about the page not loading rather than about a missing link.

If it really is gone, open the partner ledger and find the row. It holds everything you need for a short, unembarrassing message: which page, which anchor, which destination, and when it was last confirmed. Most removals are collateral damage from a rewrite, and most partners restore the link when asked, because they agreed to it in the first place and have the record to prove it.

If the partnership has gone quiet, you can pause it. Pausing stops either side asking for new links and, importantly, keeps watching the ones already placed.

What monitoring does not do

It does not check pages that were never marked live. The Checks panel on such a request says "Checks start once the link is live."

It does not judge quality. A link on a page nobody reads passes exactly the same check as a link on a great one. For whether a link is doing your site any good, look at authority, which measures the whole picture rather than one link.

And it does not replace looking. Once a quarter, open your ledger and read it top to bottom. See keeping your links alive for what that habit looks like in practice.