Internal Link Coverage

What this parameter measures

Inside your page's main body content, this parameter counts the unique same-origin links. friendly4AI detects the body-content region (preferring <main> or <article>, falling back to the largest non-navigation block), extracts the <a href> elements inside it, resolves them against the page URL, keeps only same-origin links, and de-duplicates by URL path. Links inside <nav>, <header>, <footer>, and <aside> are excluded before counting, so only links you placed in actual content count.

Why it matters for AI-readiness

AI systems read internal links as a map of how your topics connect. A page that links from its body to related articles, glossary entries, and subtopic pages signals topical depth and gives crawlers more routes into your site, which raises the chance that ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity discover and cite the connected pages. Navigation and footer links are boilerplate that appear on every page, so they carry no topical signal. That is why this parameter ignores them entirely.

How we score it

Under the v4.4 methodology, this Discovery parameter scores on the count of unique body-content internal links. It passes (100) at 3 or more unique same-origin paths in the body region. With 1 or 2 links it is partial, scaled as round(100 x n / 3), so a single link scores about 33 and two links about 67. With no body-content internal links it fails (0); navigation, header, and footer links never count toward the total. A link whose path matches a glossary hint (/glossary/, /dictionary/, /terms/) adds a +10 bonus on top of the base score, capped at 100. If the content-analysis cache is unavailable the parameter is skipped rather than failed.

How to fix common issues

• Add at least 3 links from your body copy to other pages on your own site — place them inside paragraphs, not in menus or the footer.
• Point at least one link to a glossary, dictionary, or definitions page to earn the +10 coverage bonus.
• Use descriptive anchor text that names the destination topic rather than "click here".
• Make sure your important contextual links sit inside <main> or <article>; links in <nav>/<header>/<footer>/<aside> are stripped before counting.
• Keep links same-origin — external links are valuable for other reasons but do not count toward this parameter.
• Re-scan after editing to confirm the unique body-link count reached 3.