Overview
Silktide checks links inside PDFs to ensure they work correctly. Because of the way PDFs store and represent links, you may sometimes see results that look unexpected. Most broken links reported are genuine, but PDFs do not define links in a consistent way, so a few false positives are inevitable.
Why false positives happen
Unlike webpages, PDFs do not have a standard way of marking “this is a link.” Depending on how a PDF was created, links may appear in different ways.
For example, a PDF might contain visible text such as https://www.example.com without storing it as a clickable link. Silktide will still treat that text as a link and test it, even though it cannot be clicked in a PDF viewer.
In other cases, a link may be split across lines. For instance, https://www.example- on one line and site.com on the next may still work when clicked in a viewer, but Silktide may read it incorrectly and report it as broken.
Some PDFs also store links as annotations or in unusual metadata formats. These may not align with what you see on screen, which can cause results that look like errors.
What should I do?
Open the PDF and test the link directly.
If it does not work in the PDF, the report is correct and the link should be fixed.
If it works in the PDF viewer, it is a false positive.
For false positives, use Ignore to dismiss the result, or Ignore page if an entire page contains only false positives.
If the text looks like a link (for example,
https://www.example.com) but is not clickable, consider updating the PDF so it uses proper clickable links.
Summary
Broken link reports in PDFs are usually accurate, but because PDFs do not consistently define links, some false positives will occur. You can safely dismiss these with the Ignore tools, or improve the source PDF so that links are stored in a more reliable format.