```yaml
product: AlterLab
title: "Link Graph — Web Scraping Glossary | AlterLab"
comparison_context: "AlterLab is an alternative to Firecrawl, ScrapingBee, and Bright Data."
source_url: https://alterlab.io/glossary/link-graph
```

general

# Link Graph

A link graph is a directed graph where nodes are web pages and edges are hyperlinks, used for crawl planning, PageRank analysis, and understanding site structure.

The link graph models the web as a network: each page is a node and each hyperlink from page A to page B is a directed edge A→B. Analysing the link graph reveals which pages are most central (high in-degree), which pages are orphaned (no inbound links), and which clusters of pages are closely related.

For custom crawlers, building a link graph of a target site helps prioritise which pages to scrape first (high in-degree pages are often the most important), identify all reachable pages from a given starting point, and detect crawl traps (pages that link to many others but are linked from nowhere, indicating auto-generated content).

Link graph analysis is also used in SEO research to measure a site's internal linking structure, identify thin-content pages that receive no internal links, and audit redirect chains. Tools like Screaming Frog and Sitebulb crawl sites and visualise the link graph interactively.

### What is Link Graph?

A link graph is a directed graph where nodes are web pages and edges are hyperlinks, used for crawl planning, PageRank analysis, and understanding site structure.

### How does AlterLab handle Link Graph?

Link graph analysis is also used in SEO research to measure a site's internal linking structure, identify thin-content pages that receive no internal links, and audit redirect chains. Tools like Screaming Frog and Sitebulb crawl sites and visualise the link graph interactively.

## Related Terms

[Web CrawlerA program that automatically navigates websites by following hyperlinks, systematically indexing pages across an entire domain.](https://alterlab.io/glossary/web-crawler)[Link FollowingLink following (or crawling) is the process of discovering and visiting URLs by extracting hyperlinks from already-scraped pages, enabling systematic traversal of a website.](https://alterlab.io/glossary/link-following)[Canonical URLA canonical URL is the preferred URL for a piece of content when multiple URLs serve the same or similar content, indicated by a `<link rel='canonical'>` tag.](https://alterlab.io/glossary/canonical-url)[SitemapAn XML file listing all URLs on a website with metadata like last modification date, helping crawlers discover and prioritise pages.](https://alterlab.io/glossary/sitemap)[Crawl BudgetCrawl budget is the number of pages a search engine crawler (or a custom crawler) will fetch from a site within a given timeframe, influenced by server capacity and site size.](https://alterlab.io/glossary/crawl-budget)

## Extract Link Graph data from any website

AlterLab returns clean, structured data from any public URL — no scraper infrastructure needed. Start free, no credit card required.

[View API docs](https://alterlab.io/docs/api/rest)

[Back to Glossary](https://alterlab.io/glossary)