Review external links in articles to identify unsupported factual claims and suggest authoritative sources. Check link attributes used for security and for identifying paid, affiliate, or untrusted links, then guide corrections to citations and markup.
Use when auditing content pages for citation quality, suggesting authoritative sources to link for factual claims, or reviewing whether a page's external link attributes (nofollow, noopener) are correctly set.
external-links checks whether facts and statistics in an article have source links. It helps add supporting references such as government publications, peer-reviewed research, and official documentation. It reviews links that lead away from your site, checking both the suitability of their destinations and the rel attributes used for security and advertising disclosure.
Use it before publishing a research article or explanatory page to check for claims that still lack supporting evidence. It also helps review long articles with no citations, or pages where paid and affiliate links have settings mixed up with those of ordinary reference links.
noopener noreferrer. Also review sponsored on paid links and nofollow on links whose reliability cannot be established.”These requests cover both the sources supporting the article and the attributes attached to its external links.
There are no special notes.
This overview was written by AI (OpenAI Codex) from the public SKILL.md. Check the original below for the exact behavior.
AI rated this skill on four points using only the contents of its SKILL.md. Stars and popularity are not taken into account.
The total counts each point as A = 25, B = 15, C = 5. Rated by AI (OpenAI Codex) as of Oct 23, 2026. Treat it as a guide and read the original before installing.
Review the instructions the agent will receive before you install.
Outbound links to authoritative sources strengthen the credibility of your content and are considered a positive trust signal by Google. Pages that cite their sources rank better for informational queries than those that make unsupported claims.
rel="noopener noreferrer" on external links; add rel="nofollow" only for untrusted or paid linksFor each content page, count the number of external <a href> links pointing to domains other than the current site. Check: (1) Are factual claims backed by links to authoritative sources (government sites, peer-reviewed research, official documentation)? (2) Do all external links have rel="noopener noreferrer" for security? (3) Are paid or sponsored links marked with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow"?
rel="noopener noreferrer" to all external links for security.rel="sponsored" to paid or affiliate links; rel="nofollow" to links you cannot vouch for.Google uses the context of your outbound links as a signal of content quality. Pages that cite reputable external sources are treated as more trustworthy than those making unsupported assertions. Properly attributed external links also demonstrate E-E-A-T by showing you have researched the topic from primary sources.
Parse all <a href> elements with external URLs (different domain than the site). Verify each external link has rel="noopener noreferrer". Flag paid/affiliate links missing rel="sponsored". Count external links per page — flag pages with zero external links in long-form content (>500 words) that contains factual claims.
For full implementation details, code examples, and framework-specific guidance,
see references/rule.md.
Rule page: https://frontendchecklist.io/rules/seo/external-links
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