Verification

How Verification Works

Weelinx verifies every active placement weekly and monthly, with random spot-checks. Here's exactly what the crawler checks and what happens when a check fails.

Last updated 2026-04-15

Our verification crawler is the core of Weelinx. Every active placement is checked on three cycles.

The three check cycles

Weekly light check

Every active placement, every 7 days. We fetch the page using a headless browser (so JavaScript-rendered content is seen correctly) and confirm:

Link is present at the target URL
Link rel attribute matches what was agreed
Page returns a 200 status (not 404, not redirect)

Takes about 2 seconds per placement. You'll never notice it.

Monthly full check

Every active placement, every 30 days. Everything in the light check plus:

Page is indexable (no noindex directive, not blocked by robots)
Link is in the article body (not footer, sidebar, or buried in widgets)
Content has not changed significantly since last verification (hash comparison)
Anchor text matches the agreed value

Random spot-checks

Each week, we randomly select 10% of active placements for an additional full check. This prevents gaming of predictable verification windows.

What triggers a failure

Any of the following = placement paused immediately:

Link missing from the page
Link changed from dofollow to nofollow (or vice versa vs what was agreed)
Page returning 404 or redirect
Page blocked by robots.txt or meta noindex
Anchor text materially changed
Content of the hosting article changed significantly (content drift)
Link moved out of article body

What happens when a check fails

Payment pauses immediately — no more monthly charges until resolved
Seller email with specific failure reason
Buyer email letting you know the placement is paused
7-day grace period — seller has time to fix the issue
After 7 days with no resolution:
- Subscription cancelled
- Placement permanently closed
- Both parties notified
- Seller loses future income from that placement

Express verification

Standard verification happens within 48 hours of the seller marking a placement as live. If you need same-day verification, you can add Express Verification for £5 when subscribing.

Manual verification requests

If you believe a verification result is incorrect (e.g. your link is live but was flagged missing), you can request manual re-verification from your placement dashboard. An admin will re-check within 24 hours. If the automated result was incorrect, payment is immediately resumed and you're credited for any paused period.

Reliability scores

Every seller has a reliability score calculated from their verification history — percentage of monthly checks passed across all their active placements, trailing 12 months.

95%+ reliability with 5+ active placements → eligible for Trusted Seller badge
Consistently high scores improve visibility in marketplace search
Multiple failures in 6 months trigger a manual review of all the seller's placements

Why all this matters

Verification isn't a nice-to-have. It's the single feature that makes the monthly-payment model economically viable. Without it, you'd be paying monthly for links that could disappear at any moment with no recourse.

With it, the model is simple: live link = payment. Dead link = no payment. No ambiguity.