Who it is for
What a free list taught us about decay
Public lists are written once, then they rot. A site that accepted links in 2022 may be parked, sold or de-indexed by now, and the spreadsheet will still show it with a cheerful tick.
Our crawler and our own index recheck donors against the inventory, which is why a catalogue entry beats a pasted row. The reasons lists age, with dates, are laid out in why free link exchange websites decay.
Reading is the other half of the job. People skip it. A strong row on a weak page still disappoints, so read a donor site before you buy and price the order before the basket fills. Google's spam policies treat paid links that pass credit as a link scheme, and no vendor can promise how a link will count.
Why a catalogue row can be checked again
A check is only useful when it is repeated. Our crawler and our own index recheck donors against the inventory, so the row you read is meant to be current rather than pasted once. Repetition is the point.
Your own habit should follow the same rhythm. Once a month, reopen the rows you rely on, and note anything that has changed since you last looked at them.
What to check before the basket fills
Before the basket fills, open each donor and read its newest article. Confirm that the niche still matches your page and that the traffic figure looks plausible for the site you can see.
Put one question to every row: would you be comfortable explaining this link to an editor? If the answer is no, the row does not belong in the basket, however good its numbers look.