Has link with a URL referencing a local or UNC file path

This means that the URL in question contains at least one outgoing anchor link with a URL referencing a local or UNC file path.

Why is this important?

A local path is the path to a folder or file on your local computer (e.g. C:\Program Files\Sitebulb). A UNC path is the path to a folder or file on a network and contains the server name in the path (e.g. \\server01\sitebulb\path).

In both cases, the file location is very unlikely to be publicly available to most users, and so having public links to such files will probably result in a poor user experience. Typically, these paths are accidentally referencing local resources.

Our recommendation is to remove all references to such files.

What does the Hint check?

This Hint will trigger for any internal URL which contains at least one outgoing anchor link where the href is a local or UNC file path.

Examples that trigger this Hint:

Any of the example links below would trigger the Hint.

An anchor with a URL referencing a local file path

<a href="C:\Computer\Sitebulb\page.html\">Page</a>

An anchor with a URL referencing a URL file path

<a href="\\servername\path\">Page</a>

How do you resolve this issue?

This Hint is marked 'Critical' as it represents a fundamentally breaking issue, which may have a serious adverse impact upon organic search traffic. It is strongly recommended that Critical issues are dealt with as a matter of high priority.

To resolve this issue, identify the anchors which reference a local or UNC file path in the href attribute, and correct each one on a case-by-case basis - which may require reviewing the code that generates the links.

Our recommendation is to remove all references to such files, and replace the links with publicly available resources. If no replacement page is publicly available, then remove the link entirely.

How do you get more data from Sitebulb?

From the URL List, click the blue Hint Details button, which will bring up a slide-across window with specific details about the Hint for each URL.