Understanding Link Statuses

Every affiliate link Brokenly checks is assigned one of the statuses below. The same labels appear on the Affiliate Links table and in your alert emails.

Healthy

The link resolved successfully and points to a working product page. No action needed.

Broken

The link returned a 4xx or 5xx HTTP error — typically 404 Not Found or 410 Gone. The destination page no longer exists.

Common causes:

• The merchant removed the product
• The affiliate program ended
• The product URL changed

Blocked

The link returned 403 Forbidden. The destination server explicitly refused the request — often because the merchant blocks automated traffic. The link may still work for a normal browser visitor.

Blocked links can be rechecked from the dashboard with the Retry action (see Managing Broken Links).

Redirects to Homepage

The product page redirected to the merchant's homepage (/). The product is almost certainly gone — visitors clicking your link will land somewhere unrelated and you'll lose the commission.

Redirects to Search

The product page redirected to the merchant's search results (/s). Same problem as above — the product was removed and the merchant is sending traffic to a fallback page.

Out of Stock

For Amazon affiliate links, Brokenly looks beyond the HTTP response to detect whether the product is actually buyable. Out of stock means the product page still exists but the item is unavailable to purchase right now. See Amazon Health Check.

Unavailable

For Amazon links, unavailable means the product has been removed entirely — not just temporarily out of stock.

Could Not Verify

Sometimes a link can't be classified — most often because the destination timed out, rate-limited the checker, or returned an unexpected response. These show up under the Could Not Verify filter and are retried on the next scheduled crawl.

In CSV exports, this single label covers three underlying values: timeout, rate_limited, and unknown. You'll see them spelled out in the status column.

How Often Are Statuses Updated?

Statuses refresh on your plan's crawl interval — weekly on Starter, daily on Growth, Portfolio, and Agency. You can also trigger a manual crawl at any time, or recheck individual blocked links with the Retry button on the dashboard.

Getting Alerts for Problem Links

You choose exactly which statuses should trigger an email under Settings → Notifications. See Configuring Alerts.