Choosing a monitoring cadence

What cadence controls

A monitor answers one question repeatedly: is this link still there, still followable and still on an indexable page? The cadence decides how long a change can go unnoticed. With a weekly cadence a link removed the day after a check stays undetected for about six more days; with a monthly cadence it can be nearly a month. The worst-case detection delay is roughly one interval.

Cadence also sets cost. Each run checks every pair on the schedule, so doubling the frequency doubles the checks consumed. In the IndexChex monitor a check run costs 5 credits per source and target pair, and the available cadences are one-time, daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly.

Runs per pair

The jump from weekly to daily is the steepest. It is justified when a day's delay changes what you can do about a removal, and rarely otherwise.

Matching cadence to the link

The right cadence depends on what a removal costs and how soon you could act on it:

• Paid placements inside a guarantee window. Many sellers replace links removed within a set period. Detection must come before the window closes, which usually means weekly at minimum. See monitoring paid links.
• New links in their first weeks. Removals and directive changes cluster soon after publication, when editors revise content or move sponsored posts. Weekly is a reasonable default.
• Links supporting time-sensitive pages. Product launches, campaigns and news-driven content can justify daily checks for a short period.
• Mature editorial links. A link that has been stable for a year changes less often. Monthly or quarterly keeps the record current without heavy cost.
• Citations and directory profiles. These are numerous and individually low-value. Quarterly checks catch link rot and expired listings in bulk.

Tiered cadence in practice

Many teams move links down a ladder as they age:

1. One-time check at delivery to confirm the placement matches the order.
2. Weekly checks for the guarantee period or the first two to three months.
3. Monthly checks for the rest of the first year.
4. Quarterly checks afterwards, or removal from monitoring if the link no longer matters.

A run that ends in a check-incomplete result, such as an anti-bot block, does not reset the clock. If a source is blocked on consecutive runs, a manual check is due regardless of the schedule.

Indexation is slower than presence

Link presence can change instantly when an editor deletes a sentence. Source page indexation changes more slowly, because Google has to recrawl the page before a new noindex or canonical takes effect in results. Checking indexation daily rarely shows anything that weekly would miss. If cost is a constraint, it is reasonable to keep a fast cadence for presence and a slower one for indexation where a tool allows them to be set separately.

After a submission

If a source page has just been submitted for crawling, the natural next check is a few days later, not the next day. Google needs time to process a crawled page. IndexChex can schedule an index re-check 1 to 5 days after a submission, which sits naturally between the routine cadence runs.

Choosing a default

Without other information, weekly for links younger than three months and monthly for older ones balances detection delay and cost for most portfolios. Review the choice each quarter against what the monitor has actually found: if removals are rare, slow down; if they cluster around a publisher or link type, speed up for that group. This ties cadence to evidence, which is the point of backlink monitoring and of structured backlink health checks.