Pages cite their sources
What we check
On each sampled article (the same pages the author and dates checks judge), we count links in the body of the page that go to other sites. Links in the navigation, header, footer, or sidebar don’t count, and neither do links to your own profiles, comment links, or share buttons (posting to X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, and the like). Your own www and bare domain count as your site, not another one.
Two or more outside links on an article scores it 1; one scores 0.6; none scores 0.2. The score is the average across articles. If no sampled page is an article, we skip the check. This check reads pages we already fetched, so it costs no extra requests.
Why it matters
Links to sources show your work. Writing that cites where its facts come from is easier for a reader — or a machine — to check and to trust, and it places your page in the web of things already known to be reliable.
AI assistants are built to cite their sources, and they lean toward pages that do the same. Models cite sites that cite.
How to pass
- When an article states a fact, a number, or someone else’s idea, link to where it came from — in the text, where it’s used:
<p>Clinics lose about a fifth of appointments to no-shows, according to <a href="https://example.org/study">a 2025 study</a>.</p> - Link to the original source rather than to someone else’s summary of it.
- Prefer a couple of good sources over a long list; two on a page is enough to pass.