Q: Linking to pages that redirect
I had a problem with my site that, unbeknown to me using link systems they appeared to be all working but in reality the reseller had stopped marketing certain products. What they do is redirect the link to their own store. That is problematic as link checking systems still show the link as alive but in reality, the product has gone and the reseller is profiting from my traffic and flipping buyers over to something else and i have no commissions in that case.
How does your system work with managing these types of redirections of links.
Jordy_LinkCentral
Aug 1, 2025A: Thanks for your question and for sharing your use case! LinkCentral includes a Broken Link Checker that scans your destination URLs and flags links as broken when they return errors like 404s, timeouts, or failed connections.
However, in your case (where a reseller silently redirects to another product or store) the link still appears live and valid, so it won’t be flagged as broken. This is a common challenge across all link management tools, since technically the page loads without error.
Detecting this would require content checks like keyword scanning or verifying the presence of your affiliate ID, which brings complexity and potential false positives.
If you want to avoid the issue you described, some level of manual link checking will likely be necessary. It's a known limitation across most link redirection systems. Aside from your scenario, broken links such as unreachable pages, 404s, and server errors will always be detected.
Reg-BPLUSYes, it is a real problem especially where you have a lot of product pages, and none of the link services offer (that i have seen ) a feature. It was devestating to see that all the link traffic was in fact being rerouted (and the affiliate ID drops) to just their plain URL. It's a complex one, i think there could be a solution but it would involve a multi layer checking system.
Yes, indeed. A solution would likely require either a very custom setup for specific affiliate programs (which isn’t scalable), or a system that flags certain destinations (like homepages) as potentially broken. Or some keyword or affiliate ID checking, but that introduces a risk of false positives. While I understand the challenge, I'm cautious about implementing this in LinkCentral.