Overview
We’ve expanded Silktide’s testing to include PDFs. This means that links inside your PDFs are now checked in the same way as the links on your webpages.
This has been one of our most requested features, and it has now been rolled out to all customers. You may notice more broken link results than before, as we’re now able to uncover issues in your PDFs that were previously invisible.
Why this matters
Links inside PDFs are often just as important as links on webpages. They connect users to additional resources, provide references, and guide readers to take action. Until now, broken links in PDFs were not included in Silktide testing.
With this release, you’ll get a more complete picture of your content quality and accessibility.
How PDF link testing works
While this new engine is highly accurate (tested against thousands of cases at over 99% accuracy), checking links in PDFs is more complex than checking webpages.
PDFs do not have a consistent way of marking that something is a link. Different software creates PDFs in different ways, which means:
Some text like
https://www.example.comlooks like a link but is not technically stored as one.Links can be broken across lines or split with hyphens.
Some links are stored in annotations or metadata that do not match what you see on screen.
As a result, you may see occasional false positives. If you want to know more about why this happens and what to do when it does, see our guide: Why are broken links reported in PDFs?
Summary
PDF broken link testing is now live in Silktide. This gives you deeper coverage across your digital content and helps you catch issues that were previously missed. The system is highly accurate, but the nature of PDFs means a small number of false positives are expected.