How to Visualize Your Website as an Interactive Link Graph

The Link Explorer in QueryBurst renders the internal link graph as an interactive force-directed visualization — showing hub-and-spoke patterns, clusters, bridges, and isolated nodes that are invisible in tabular data. Navigate hop-by-hop from any page, inspect page-level detail on click, and identify structural bottlenecks or disconnected sections affecting how crawlers and AI systems traverse the site.

How to Access Link Explorer in QueryBurst

  1. Open a site in QueryBurst
  2. Click Link Analysis in the sidebar
  3. Select the Link Explorer subtab

Understanding the Interface

Graph View

The main visualisation is a force-directed graph where:

  • Nodes represent pages
  • Edges represent internal links
  • Solid edges — Content-area links (editorial links within page body)
  • Dashed edges — Structural links (navigation, footer, header)
  • Colour coding — Nodes are coloured by depth from the homepage

The graph starts from a seed page (defaults to the homepage or the most-linked page).

Seed Selection

Click the search icon to change the starting page. Search by URL or title.

Node Detail Panel

Click any node to see its detail panel:

SectionDescription
StatsInbound link count, outbound count, content authority score, depth
Depth badgesStructural and content depth from the homepage
AlertsOrphan or dead-end warnings if applicable

Tabs

The detail panel has four tabs:

Outbound:

  • Pages that the selected page links to
  • Shows page title, link type, content authority bar, and degree distance from seed

Inbound:

  • Pages that link to the selected page
  • Same format as outbound

Content Path:

  • Shortest path from the seed page using only content links
  • Shows each hop with the connecting page

Structural Path:

  • Shortest path from the seed using all link types
  • Fetched from the backend for accuracy

Minimap

The force-directed graph provides a birds-eye view of the link structure. Navigate by clicking nodes directly in the graph.

Legend

The legend explains edge types (content vs structural) and node colour coding (depth levels).

Interpreting Results

Healthy Signs

  • Dense, well-connected graph — Pages are reachable through multiple paths
  • Short paths — Most pages are 2–3 hops from the homepage
  • Mix of content and structural edges — Pages are linked both editorially and structurally
  • High content authority on key pages — Important pages receive many editorial links

Warning Signs

  • Isolated nodes — Pages with very few connections
  • Long paths — Pages requiring 5+ hops to reach from the homepage
  • Structural-only connections — Pages linked only via navigation with no editorial support
  • Orphan/dead-end alerts — Structural problems flagged on individual pages

Tips

  1. Start from your homepage — See how the entire site radiates outward
  2. Check important pages — Navigate to key content and verify it's well-connected
  3. Compare content vs structural paths — Pages with very different path types may need better content linking
  4. Look for isolated clusters — Groups of pages not connected to the main structure
  5. Use the path tabs — Trace exactly how users (and crawlers) would navigate between two pages