The page connections map

The Map draws your site as pages and the links between them. It appears as its own tab, and in a smaller form on the overview under How your pages connect.

It opens where a visitor would: "Start at your homepage. Select a page to follow its links."

How it works

Pick a page and the map shows what points at it and what it points to. Pick one of those and it becomes the centre. You explore by following links, the way somebody browsing your site would.

Find a page searches by name or address when you know where you want to start.

Back returns to the previous page, so wandering has an undo.

Reading a page

Links to this page counts and lists the pages pointing at it. This is the number that says how much your own site values the page.

This page links to counts and lists where it sends people.

A note under them explains one thing that would otherwise puzzle you: "Arrows show where a link takes you. Repeated links between the same pages are shown once." Your menu links every page to every other page, and drawing all of that would produce a solid block rather than a map.

Technical page details opens what the audit recorded about the page itself.

Pages with no incoming links

The section worth opening first, with a count and an explanation: "No other audited page links to these pages. Add a link from a related page so visitors can find them."

These are pages a visitor cannot browse to. They can only arrive from search, a bookmark, or somebody else's site.

The homepage is excluded, because nothing links to a homepage from inside a site and that is normal.

For working through them rather than looking at them, pages nothing links to is the list version, ordered by what each already earns.

What to look for

Start with the pages nothing links to. That is the most actionable thing a map shows, and the one where a fix has a clear effect.

Then look at your most important page, the one you would most like to rank. Count what links to it. On most sites the answer is disappointing, and the fix is a handful of links from related pages.

Then look for pages that link out to a lot and receive nothing back. Those are usually index or listing pages doing work nobody is rewarding them for.

Large sites

On a big site the map shows part of the audit rather than all of it, and says so, along with how many audited pages are available. Use search to get to the part you care about rather than trying to see everything at once.

The map also reflects the latest saved audit, so a page added since the last run will not be there. Run an audit and it appears.

Before the first audit

There is nothing to draw, and the page says so rather than showing an empty canvas: audit the site and the map fills in.

Where to go next

Internal links turns what you see here into specific suggestions. Pages nothing links to is the working list.