Link health: broken and out-of-stock alerts
How Pointerly checks your Amazon, eBay and Walmart links for broken pages and out-of-stock products, when you get alerted, and what to do about it.
A link whose product page is gone, or whose product can't be bought, still takes clicks but earns nothing. Pointerly checks your Amazon, eBay and Walmart links on a schedule and tells you when one breaks, goes out of stock, or comes back.
What gets checked
Every active Amazon, eBay or Walmart link (product links, Amazon storefronts and list pages). Pointerly asks the store's affiliate catalog first:
| Store | Out of stock when | Broken when |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon | Every offer is out of stock or unavailable. If Amazon lists no offers at all, the product page decides. | The product page no longer exists |
| eBay | The listing is sold out | The listing ended or no longer exists |
| Walmart | The item isn't available online | The item page no longer exists |
If the catalog says nothing about a product, Pointerly opens the product page itself before calling the link broken. When neither one gives a clear answer (the store is throttling, or showing a bot check), the link keeps its last status and is checked again a few hours later. A check that can't decide never changes your link or sends you an alert.
How often
The busier a link is, the more often it's checked:
| Link | Checked about every |
|---|---|
| Broken or out of stock | 6 hours (so you hear "back in stock" quickly) |
| 100+ clicks in the last 7 days | 4 hours |
| 10–99 clicks | 12 hours |
| 1–9 clicks | 24 hours |
| No clicks in the last 7 days | 3 days |
New links and links whose destination you change are checked within the hour. To check one right away, use Check again on the link's health banner, or Check now under Money Pages + Link Rescue.
Alerts
You get an alert when a link:
- breaks: the product page is gone,
- goes out of stock: the product can't be bought,
- is back in stock, or
- works again after being broken.
Alerts go to the person who created the link and to the workspace's owners and admins. They arrive in-app, by email and as a push notification on the iOS app. Change the channels under Settings → Notifications → Link health.
When several of your links change at once, you get one summary ("5 links need attention") that opens the links list filtered to exactly those links. You get at most one alert per link and change per day, and an "out of stock" alert is cleared on its own once the product is back.
What to do
Open the link (the alert's button takes you there). The Destination health banner shows what was found and since when.
- Out of stock: edit the destination to a product that's in stock, or open Money Pages + Link Rescue and choose Rescue only. While the product is unavailable, visitors are sent to an alternative product (pick one with Find similar), a search for similar products, or your Money Page. Once the product is back in stock, visitors go straight to it again.
- Broken: edit the destination, or pause the link if the product is gone for good.
To see every affected link, filter Dashboard → Links by Health (Broken, Out of stock, Warning, Tag issue, Healthy).
Limits
- Only Amazon, eBay and Walmart links are checked for stock. Links to other stores are covered by link safety and the destination watch routine, not by stock checks.
- Paused, expired and deleted links aren't checked.
- Stock is what the store reports for your marketplace when the check runs; a product can sell out and restock between checks.