TraceLinker
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Core Concepts

Core Concepts

Understand audits vs monitoring, link transitions, AI scoring, and toxicity - the model behind every TraceLinker workflow.

Before diving into specific workflows, it helps to understand the four objects that everything in TraceLinker revolves around.

1. The Audit

An audit is a one-time AI-driven evaluation of a list of source URLs against a target domain. Think of it as a snapshot.

  • Input: a CSV of source URLs (where the link lives) and a target domain (where the link should point).
  • Process: TraceLinker fetches each source URL with Crawl4AI, locates anchors pointing at the target, then runs each link through the DeepSeek scoring model.
  • Output: a row per discovered link with status, score, reasoning, toxicity, and ai_actions.

Audits live forever in your account - they are your historical record. You can rerun an audit on the same CSV later to compare snapshots.

When to use an audit: onboarding a new client, evaluating a backlink supplier's deliverables, vetting a guest-post target list, or making a one-shot decision about a profile.

2. The Monitored Link

A monitored link is a single source-URL/target-URL pair that TraceLinker checks on a schedule. While an audit is a snapshot, monitoring is a movie.

  • Frequency depends on plan: weekly (Free), daily (Pro), hourly (Agency).
  • Each check records a monitor_log row with the current status (alive / changed / dead).
  • When the status changes between two consecutive checks, that's a transition - the trigger for emails, reclaim drafts, and dashboard alerts.

You typically promote your best discovered backlinks (score 70+) from an audit into monitoring. Your Free plan covers 5 monitored links, Pro 100, Agency 1,000.

When to use monitoring: after audit, for any link you care about long-term. Money-page links, high-DR placements, links you paid for, links you spent outreach effort to acquire.

3. The Transition

A transition is when a monitored link's status changes between two consecutive checks. Five transition types matter:

FromToWhat it usually means
alivechangedAnchor text edited, surrounding context changed, dofollow→nofollow, or moved to a different page. Link still works.
alivedeadLink removed, page 404, or domain expired. Triggers a reclaim draft.
deadaliveLink returned. Rare, but worth knowing for paid placements.
changedaliveThe change was reverted - rare.
changeddeadSlow death after an edit.

Every transition produces an email (default settings) and an entry in the monitor_logs table for the link. You can mute specific transition types in Settings → Notifications.

4. The AI Score

The score is a 1-100 number assigned by the DeepSeek model that estimates the SEO value of a single backlink. It is the single most important field in the product.

Score rangeBucketTreatment
80-100ValuablePromote to monitoring. Worth defending and reclaiming.
70-79SolidWorth monitoring.
50-69BorderlineAcceptable but not a priority.
30-49WeakNot worth pursuing actively.
1-29SuspiciousCandidate for disavow if also flagged toxic.

The score is not a black box. Every link has a reasoning field explaining the score in one sentence. For the full methodology - what signals the model uses, the prompt structure, and known limitations - see AI Scoring Methodology.

5. The Toxicity Flag

Separate from the score, every link gets a toxicity classification: safe, caution, or toxic. This catches negative SEO signals the score alone might miss:

  • PBN signals - footer-only links, link-only pages, sites with no real content.
  • Anchor over-optimization - exact-match keywords above 30% on a single page.
  • Suspicious TLD patterns - .tk, .ml, mass new-gTLD registrations.
  • Bad context - placement near casino, adult, malware, or pharma content.

Toxicity is what feeds the Disavow file generator. A score of 90 and toxicity safe is the gold standard. A score of 25 and toxicity toxic is a disavow candidate. A score of 65 and toxicity caution is a "watch but don't act" link.

6. The Domain Backlink Score

A single composite 0-100 score for your entire profile, computed as:

Quality (50%)        avg AI score across monitored + valuable discovered links
Diversity (25%)      unique source domains and TLD spread
Toxicity penalty     toxic_count / total_count subtracted

Letter grade A-F maps the number to a familiar grade. The Score page also gives you an SVG badge embed snippet you can paste on your site to show off your profile health publicly.

How they connect

CSV / GSC -> Audit -> Discovered Backlinks -> [promote] -> Monitored Links
                          |                                       |
                          v                                       v
                      AI Score + Toxicity                    Transitions
                          |                                       |
                          +------+------+                  +------+------+
                                 |      |                  |             |
                                 v      v                  v             v
                          Disavow File  Outreach    Reclaim Email   Notifications

Every workflow in the next section is one slice of this picture. The Audit is the entry point, the AI fields drive the decision logic, and Monitoring keeps the picture current.

What's deliberately not in this product

A few things you might expect but won't find, so you know upfront:

  • Live global link index - we do not crawl the entire web like Ahrefs. You bring data via CSV or GSC.
  • Keyword research - this is a backlink tool, not a full SEO suite.
  • Site audit (technical SEO) - same.
  • Per-seat user accounts inside one workspace - one account per workspace; share with your team via SSO at the OS level.

These are deliberate scope choices. They keep the product focused, the price low, and the AI workflows the star.

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