Page links

This panel lists all links (A tags in the HTML) found in the selected web page in the main view.

An example of A tag in the HTML syntax is:

<a href="...(a relative or absolute URL)...">the anchor text</a>

Links are a founding elements of the Web. Visual SEO Studio spider - like search engine spiders - follows links to discover and visit website pages.

Internal

By selecting or deselecting the Internal toggle button you can show or internal links.
The button also reports the number of internal links found.

External

By selecting or deselecting the External toggle button you can show or external links.
The button also reports the number of external links found.

Links found

The number of links found on the selected page.

Page URL

The address of the page the listed links refer to.

Find all links to the URL

Clicking on this link will launch the Links Inspector features, preset to find all links pointing to the selected page URL.

Find pages linking to the URL

Clicking on this link the program will search for pages linking to the selected page URL and open the result set in a Tabular View.

Nr

The progressive number of the A link as found in the HTML.

Protocol

The protocol of the link target URL. Usual values are http or https, but you can find also other values.

Authority

The combination of host name and, if different from the default value, port number. Referred to the URL of the resource pointed by the link.

Internal Path

The resource path (URL decoded, thus in human-readable form).

Absolute URL

The absolute URL of the destination address pointed by the link.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the text that in the HTML code appears between the link start <a> and end </a> tags.
When shown in a browser, link anchor text is sensible to the mouse click: by clicking on it user can navigate the destination URL. Browsers by default give the anchor text evidence showing them in blue underlined text; this behavior is often overridden by webmaster though to better align to the website style.

HREF value

The value of the href attribute in the HTML markup of the link. Attribute href can contain a relative or an absolute URL.

CSS path

The CSS absolute path describes the location of the link using the CSS locator syntax, considering its complete hierarchy in the DOM of the HTML document.

Link type

Not all links were born equal. Even when they can pass PageRank, they are taken in better or worse consideration by search engines depending on their placement within the web page.
Content links are generally considered of higher value than - for example - footer links.
Visual SEO Studio has a powerful feature: it is able to classify the type of link. Recognized types are:

• Content
  The link is placed within the body of an article, blog post, etc. Content links are considered of higher value.
• Navigation
  The link is placed within a navigation menu, likely shared among all pages or a set of pages.
• Header
  The link is placed within the header part of the web page, likely shared among all pages.
• Footer
  The link is placed within the footer part of the web page, likely shared among all pages.
• Sidebar
  The link is placed within a side element of the web page, likely shared among more pages.
• Signature
  The link is placed within a forum or blog signature.
• Comment
  The link is placed within a user generated comment, e.g. a comment in a blog post.
• Unknown
  Used when the program was not able to categorize the link.

Title

The value of the optional title attribute in the HTML markup of the link. Browsers usually use the title attribute value as a tooltip. Search engines can occasionally use the title value to associate a text to the link destination page, in particular when no anchor text is present.

Can pass PR

A link can flow PR if it is not nofollow and the page where it is is not nofollow.

No Follow

States whether the value of the optional rel attribute in the HTML markup of the link contains the value nofollow.
The rel attribute accepts multiple values separated by spaces.
The nofollow value tells the search engines not to follow the link - but a search engine could do it anyway for discovery purposes - and mostly suggests not to pass the so-called "link juice", a page value asset which in Google case is known as PageRank.
Visual SEO Studio spider doesn't follow nofollow links during a site exploration (unless explicitly asked via crawl options for verified sites), and takes it into account when evaluating whether the link passes PageRank.

Sponsored

States whether the value of the optional rel attribute in the HTML markup of the link contains the value sponsored.
The rel attribute accepts multiple values separated by spaces.
The sponsored value tells the search engines the link was paid for and should not to pass the so-called "link juice", a page value asset which in Google case is known as PageRank.
Visual SEO Studio spider doesn't follow sponsored links during a site exploration (unless explicitly asked via crawl options for verified sites), and takes it into account when evaluating whether the link passes PageRank.

UGC

States whether the value of the optional rel attribute in the HTML markup of the link contains the value ugc.
The rel attribute accepts multiple values separated by spaces.
The ugc value stands for "User generated content" and tells the search engines the link was placed there by a site user (e.g. a comment in a blog post) and should not to pass the so-called "link juice", a page value asset which in Google case is known as PageRank.
Visual SEO Studio spider doesn't follow ugc links during a site exploration (unless explicitly asked via crawl options for verified sites), and takes it into account when evaluating whether the link passes PageRank.

Target

The value of the optional target attribute in the HTML markup of the link. Attribute target tells the browser how to open the linked web page. For example target="_blank" will tell the browser to open the page in another tab sheet.

Line

The line in the HTML file where the start tag of the link was found.
The cell is an active link; clicking on it will highlight in the Content or DOM side panel (depending on what you choose from the resulting context menu) the link start tag.

Position

The horizontal coordinate in the HTML file where the start tag of the link was found.
The cell is an active link; clicking on it will highlight in the Content or DOM side panel (depending on what you choose from the resulting context menu) the link start tag.

robots.txt

A symbol stating whether the visit to the URL pointed by the link is allowed by the robots.txt file.
Possible values are:

• Access to the resource pointed by the link is blocked by the robots.txt file.
• Blank, when no blockage by robots.txt was detected.

Blocking directive in robots.txt

When the link is internal (i.e. when it points to a site internal resource), but could not be followed because of a block in the robots.txt file, the cell reports the blocking directive of the robots.txt file.
The directive has an active link: once clicked the robots.txt file will be selected in the main view, the Content side pane will be activated, and the corresponding line containing the directive in the robots.txt file will be highlighted.

Internal

A symbol stating whether the linked page is an internal site page or an external resource.
Possible values are:

• The link points to an INTERNAL resource.
• The link points to an EXTERNAL resource.