Cloud dead-link checking: the shared external link cache
Checking every external link from your machine is slow and rude to the sites you link to. The cloud service checks against a shared cache instead.
What the cloud dead-links service is
Verifying external links means at least one HTTP request per link, and often more: the checker tries HEAD, falls back to GET, and follows redirects. On a site with a few thousand outbound links, that is a slow phase for you and a burst of automated traffic for everyone you link to.
The cloud service moves that work behind a cache shared across every audit. A link any recent audit checked comes back immediately, working links stay cached for seven days and failures for 24 hours. This rule is the gate that turns it on: enabling it routes the audit’s external-link phase through the service instead of fetching each link locally.
What squirrel checks
The rule is a summary. The per-link findings belong to links/broken-external-links, and this check never re-scores them, which is why its status is always informational. It emits a single check named dead-links:
- Skipped when external link checking did not run. Message:
No external link check data available. - Info when the site has no external links. Message:
No external links found to verify, with a value of 0. - Info otherwise, with one of two wordings:
Checked 128 external link(s); none are deadorChecked 128 external link(s); 4 dead. When some targets were throttled,; 2 rate-limited (status unverifiable)is appended.
A link counts as dead on the same basis as links/broken-external-links: a fetch error, or a status of 400 or above that is neither a firewall-blocked 403 nor a rate-limit response. Severity info, weight 1, the lowest of any rule in the Links category.
How to fix it
Log in with squirrel auth login to use the service. Dead-link checking is included in the audit base charge, so it does not produce a separate spend prompt. Being logged out falls back to local per-link checking.
The findings themselves are on links/broken-external-links. Fix them there.
| Rule ID | links/dead-links |
| Category | Links |
| Scope | Site-wide |
| Severity | info |
| Weight | 1/10 |
| Default | Enabled |
Enable / disable
Disable cloud link checking (keep local checking)
[rules]
disable = ["links/dead-links"]Disable external link checking entirely
[external_links]
enabled = falseRelated rules
- links/broken-external-links: where the per-link findings are reported.
- links/external-links: how many external links each page carries.
- links/broken-links: internal links, which are always checked locally.
- integrity/known-malicious-url: the reputation check over the same outbound links.
Links findings ship in every audit next to the SEO, performance and agent experience rules. See Fix SEO issues with AI for how an agent works through a report.
References
Check your site
Run squirrel audit https://example.com and open the Links section of the report. The summary line reports how many external links were checked and how many are dead. Local audits are free.