How the link score is calculated
The link score reflects the health of your store’s navigation links — menus, footers, and any other link collections managed through Shopify’s navigation settings. Dead links frustrate customers and signal poor site maintenance to search engines.
Scoring formula
Link scoring is threshold-based, weighted by the importance of each broken link:
Effective weight = Σ(dead link weights) + Σ(unreachable link weights × 0.5)Unreachable links are penalised at half the rate of confirmed dead links, since they may be caused by temporary network issues rather than a permanently broken URL.
| Effective weight | Score |
|---|---|
| 0 | 100 |
| ≤ 1 | 90 |
| ≤ 3 | 75 |
| ≤ 6 | 55 |
| ≤ 12 | 35 |
| > 12 | 15 |
Link weight
Not all broken links are equally damaging. A dead link in the main navigation is far more visible than one buried in a footer. Store Health assigns higher weights to links in prominent positions.
Dead vs. unreachable
- Dead links return HTTP 404 or another definitive error response. These are confirmed broken.
- Unreachable links timed out or returned a network error. These may be temporarily down.
Weight in the overall health score
The link score contributes 10% of the total store health score.
How to improve your score
- Open the Links section of your scan results to see all flagged URLs.
- For each dead link, either update the URL to the correct destination or remove the link.
- Fix links in Online Store → Navigation in the Shopify admin.
- For links that are marked unreachable but should be valid, re-run the scan to confirm.
Dead links in checkout flows or the main navigation should be treated as critical fixes — customers hitting a 404 mid-purchase will abandon.