External No Response

What This Means

An outbound link on this page received no HTTP response during the crawl — the connection timed out, was refused, or the DNS resolution failed. The external server could not be reached at all.

Why It Matters for SEO

A no-response external link is worse than a 4xx — at least a 4xx returns a response. A completely unresponsive URL may indicate the domain has expired, the server is permanently down, or the URL has been taken offline. Users clicking the link will see a browser-level "site can't be reached" error.

What the Platform Checks

The platform makes connection attempts to each external URL and records whether any HTTP response was received. Fires when the connection attempt fails entirely.

How to Fix It

• Check the URL manually to confirm whether the external site is accessible.
• If the external domain has expired or the site is permanently gone: remove the link and update the referencing content.
• If the external site is temporarily down: monitor over multiple crawl runs before deciding to remove the link.