Outgoing internal links
also called OutlinksCanonical links from a page
Definition
How many internal links a URL points at.
Scope, grain and dimensions
- Grain
- One value per crawled URL.
- Dimensions
- url
- Aggregation
- A per-URL attribute from the crawl graph, returned alongside the incoming count so the two sides of a page's linking position can be read together.
- Metric type
- raw measure · internal links
Data sources
Where you'll see this
Named reports that normally include this metric.
Internal linking reportTechnical SEO audit report
Skills and analyses that use it
Skills carry the judgment; the analysis verbs do the reading.
Analysis verbs
internal_link_flow
Method rungs and levers
This sits on the bottom rung: if it reads badly, every measurement above it is unreliable.
Ask Quattr
- "Which pages distribute the most internal links?" Simulate this →
- "Where does link equity pool?" Simulate this →
How to read it
The supply side of internal linking: which pages are handing out links, as opposed to receiving them. Pages with many outgoing links and few incoming ones are usually hubs; the reverse pattern is usually a destination that nothing routes onward from.
Caveats, freshness and failure modes
A passthrough of a crawler-produced column; the crawler's link-counting rules are not readable in the semantic layer.
It is a count, not a weighting, it says nothing about where the links point or how prominent they are on the page.
The list is capped and sorted by the INCOMING count, so it is not a ranking of the biggest link sources.
A crawl is a snapshot on its own schedule.
- Freshness
- per crawl schedule, cadence is set per site; the card names the crawl it read.
Common failure modes
- Reading a high outgoing count as authority distribution without knowing the targets.
- Assuming the returned list is sorted by this field, it is sorted by incoming links.
Not the same as
The confusions that cause the most wrong decisions.
Outgoing internal links Incoming internal links Compare definitions →
Outgoing counts links a page gives; incoming counts links it receives. Only the incoming count drives the orphan test.
Watch this metric read in a real run
All runs →
Related metrics and workflows
Verification
A definition is the smallest part of this.
The measurement matters because something acts on it. Here is the rest of the showcase, in the order most people find useful.