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Nivedha Mohan
The Link Analytics module currently identifies some valid, working links as Broken or Unknown due to backend HTTP requests receiving a 403 Forbidden status. This occurs because certain websites block automated backend requests for security reasons. However, when accessed through a browser, these links work fine.
This creates false positives in the broken link report, which can mislead users and create unnecessary concern or cleanup work.
To improve accuracy and transparency, we propose:
  1. Switching to a browser-based crawling approach for link validation.
  2. Displaying the HTTP status code in the UI for each broken/unknown link, so users can understand the root cause.