# 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](/content/docs/link-analysis/index.html)** 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:

| Section           | Description                                                                |
|------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| **Stats**        | Inbound link count, outbound count, content authority score, depth         |
| **Depth badges** | Structural and content depth from the homepage                              |
| **Alerts**       | Orphan 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

## Related Reports

- **Link Overview** — Summary dashboard
- **[Click Depth](/content/docs/link-analysis/click-depth/index.html)** — Depth distribution with page drill-down
- **[Orphans](/content/docs/link-analysis/orphans/index.html)** — Pages missing internal links
- **[Graph Explorer](/content/docs/site-intelligence/graph-explorer/index.html)** — Similar walker for the [knowledge graph](/content/docs/site-intelligence/knowledge-graph/index.html) (entities instead of pages)