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How 'broken links' are defined (SWOOP for SharePoint)

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SWOOP for SharePoint scans page content for hyperlinks and URLs defined by the HTML <a> tag.  We test the link and depending on the result will either ignore the link because it works as expected or classify it as one of two types of issue.  

Links with issues

Links that resolve correctly, return a login page, or redirects are not recorded as a link with an issue.  Links with issues are those that we cannot access, and usually these will return an HTTP error code.  Depending on the code we will classify the link issue as either a Broken Link or an Unverified Link (Needs Review).

Broken Links

Broken links are those with errors we are confident the link is broken.  The most common of these is a '404' error where the destination of the link is not found, but there are others that indicate there is a problem with the link that will affect users on an ongoing basis. 

A link we identify as a Broken Link will be included in our quality score calculations and therefore affect the quality score and health score in our reports.

Unverified Link (Needs Review).

There are errors we detect that may indicate a more temporary problem, such as servers timing out, or may relate to advanced security checks on users, such as authentication (which SWOOP will not have).  In other words, we cannot be confident the link is broken on an ongoing basis, so we classify these links as Unverified, and suggest they are reviewed by an actual user.

Common causes of Unverified Links.

  • A server has timed out before giving a response - this might be because a server was rebooting at the time we checked the link.
  • The server needs a user to be authenticated. Unlike being sent to a log in page, which we don't class as an issue, this is where a webpage expects a user to be logged in or authenticated already and will block anyone else.  As SWOOP does not have authenticated access beyond the SharePoint sites we monitor, we get blocked and so cannot confirm if the link is valid.
  • The target website uses a service to confirm access to content.  These can be systems that look for a human pattern of web-browsing to allow access (such as Cloudflare), or looks for a logged in user (such as LinkedIn).

Any Unverified Link (Needs Review) we identify are listed as an issue on our Pages with Issues or Fix List reports but are excluded from the quality score calculation and therefore do not impact health scores.