External link could not be verified (the site blocks bots)
external_link_unverifiedShort answer
A link on your site points to an external page that returned an error to Glimana's link checker, but the site's own home page returned an error too (or the response carried a bot-protection signature from a service such as Cloudflare, Akamai or DataDome). That pattern means the site blocks automated requests, not that the page is gone. Nothing needs to change unless the link is really dead: open it in a browser, and if it loads, leave it.
Why it matters
This is an information row, not a problem report. Many large sites (public institutions, publishers, banks) answer every non-browser request with 403 or 404. Treating those as broken links would push you to remove good citations. Glimana keeps them apart from Broken external link so that list stays trustworthy, and shows them here so you know which links it could not confirm.
How Glimana detects it
External link targets are checked in small batches every hour and re-checked every 14 days. When a target answers 404, Glimana also requests the root of the same site. If the root also answers 400 or above, or the response shows a bot-protection signature, the target is classed as blocked for bots and listed here instead of under broken links. 401, 403 and 429 answers are never counted as broken. The evidence lists each page with up to ten such targets; a link in a menu or footer is reported once.
How to fix it
- Find the affected pages in Glimana. Open Issues › External link could not be verified (the site blocks bots). This is a site-level check, so the single row carries the full evidence: the URLs, values or days involved. Information rows do not create a task.
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Apply the fix on your platform.
Open each listed link in a normal browser window.
- It loads: the link is fine. Leave it; the row is only information.
- It shows "page not found" in the browser too: the page is gone. Update the link to the new address, link to an archived copy (web.archive.org), or remove it — the same fix as for a broken link.
- It redirects to a home page or a login wall: decide whether the citation is still useful; replace it with a public source if not.
Edit the post or page that contains the link (the evidence names it) and change or remove the link in the block editor. For a link in a menu, edit it under Appearance → Menus or the site editor's Navigation block. A broken-link plugin will report the same sites as broken for the same reason; trust a browser check.
Edit the page, blog post or product description that contains the link in the admin, or the menu under Online Store → Navigation. Links in theme sections are edited in the theme editor.
Search the templates and content store for the URL. If the link sits in a shared template (menu, footer), fix it once there. Do not add special headers or user agents to make our checker pass: Glimana checks as itself and does not impersonate browsers.
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Publish and clear caches. Save and publish, then make sure the crawler will see the new version: WordPress — clear the page cache in your cache plugin and purge the CDN; Shopify — theme and content changes go live on save, but purge any CDN in front of the store; custom code — deploy and purge the edge cache. Check in a private window or with
curl -s https://your-domain/page | grep -i '<title\|canonical\|robots'that the live HTML has changed; Glimana reads what the server sends, not what your browser has cached. - Nothing to mark as done. There is no task for information rows. If you changed or removed a link, the next crawl updates the list; if you left a working link in place, the row stays as a reminder that it could not be verified automatically.
How the fix is verified
No task is opened. The row disappears when the link is removed or changed, or when a later check gets a normal answer from the target.
FAQ
Why does Glimana not just use a browser user agent?
Glimana identifies itself honestly and does not pretend to be a browser. A site that blocks bots is entitled to; we report what we could and could not verify.
Will Google treat these links as broken?
No. Google does not penalise you for linking to a site that blocks crawlers. What matters for readers is whether the link works in a browser.