Collaborations

The idea

A conversation is talk. A collaboration is the written version of what you agreed, held by the platform, visible to both of you, and impossible to misremember later.

Inside it are commitments. Each commitment says who owes what: which site the link goes on, which page it points to, what the anchor says, and whether it is dofollow. One collaboration can hold one commitment or several.

Getting from a conversation to an agreement

Whoever received the request writes the agreement down first, using what was proposed as a starting point.

If they only record what they themselves are taking on, it is agreed there and then. Asking the other side to confirm what they just asked for would be paperwork with no purpose.

If they add a commitment for the other side too, it becomes a proposal, and the other side confirms or declines it.

The person who sent the request can also put the terms forward instead, and then it is the other side who confirms.

Either way, nothing becomes an agreement without both sides having said yes to anything they owe. If either of you decides the deal is not happening, the terms can be withdrawn and the conversation carries on.

Doing the work

When somebody is writing an article for a guest post, content writing, or an exchange, that person marks the work as started once they begin. It tells the other side that something is moving before there is anything to show, and it cannot be undone, so use it when you have actually started.

When the link goes up, the person who committed to it declares the page it appeared on. That address has to sit on the domain that was agreed. From that moment the link is tracked, and the person it points to is told it has entered monitoring.

Declaring the first link moves the collaboration from agreed to in progress.

Fixing a typo in the address

If you mistype the page address, you can correct it yourself, but only until the first automated check has run. After that, correcting it goes through a formal change to the agreement instead.

The reason is that once a link has a check history, silently repointing it would rewrite the record of what was actually delivered.

Changing an agreement

Either side can propose a change to a commitment: a different destination, a different anchor, dofollow or not, a different date.

The other side answers. Accepted, the commitment changes, and if a link is already live the check is rerun against the new terms. Declined, the agreement stands exactly as it was.

Only one proposed change per commitment at a time, and you cannot answer your own.

Closing

Closing a collaboration, whether as completed or as cancelled, is a request the other side has to agree to. Either of you can send it, and nothing changes until the other answers: accepting closes the collaboration, declining leaves it open exactly as it was.

If the other side does not answer within 14 days, a request to close as completed simply expires and the collaboration stays open. Closing always needs both sides to agree, so silence is never enough. A cancellation request left unanswered for the same 14 days does close the collaboration, but only ever as “no answer came in time”, never as something you agreed to.

Closing does not delete anything, whichever way it happens. The commitments, the links and the whole check history stay where they are and keep being monitored.

What the tracking does

Every tracked link is checked on a schedule, weekly on the free plan and daily on premium. You can also ask for an immediate check, which uses one of your monthly manual checks.

A check can find that the link is live, that it was removed, that the page is gone or has moved, that a nofollow or sponsored tag appeared where dofollow was agreed, that the site is not responding, or that the site refused the check.

Nothing is reported after one bad result. Sites go down and pages move. The same result has to come back three times before anybody is told, and if the link comes back on its own before that, nobody is bothered at all.

When the threshold is crossed, both sides are notified and an email goes out. The link's own page lists every check that has run, each with its outcome and the HTTP status the page returned.

When a site refuses to be checked

Some sites sit behind protection that blocks automated visits. When that happens, the link is marked as access blocked, in neutral language, and it is not treated as a missing link.

It means we could not look, not that the link is gone. We keep trying on every round.

When a link is found missing

If the page opens normally and the link is not on it, that is different from every other outcome, and it is the one that gets written into your conversation as well as sent to you.

The message states what was found and nothing more: which link, which page, that the automated check did not find it, and on which days. It does not say the link was removed deliberately, because the check cannot know that, and a rebuilt site or a migrated CMS looks identical from the outside.

It is there so that both of you are looking at the same record rather than at two versions of events.

Every other outcome, including a site that refuses to be checked, stays in your notifications and email and is not posted into the conversation.