Links campaign, search opportunities and a technical site audit
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What shipped
Three things shipped: a Links section in Campaigns, search opportunities turned into briefs, and a technical site audit with fixes for your coding agent.
Links. Campaigns now has a Links section. It proposes directories, review sites, marketplaces, curated lists and member directories that fit your business, each with a reason. Ballad checks that each page loads and drafts the listing from your product facts. Results are measured by what they bring in.
Search opportunities. Ballad finds searches your site could win: searches no article answers, articles stuck just off page one, and page-one articles earning fewer clicks than their position should. It ranks them by estimated payoff and turns them into briefs.
Site audit. The weekly audit now checks for rules that block search engines, noindex on pages that should rank, broken internal links, and Google's URL Inspection results for key pages. Each finding comes with a fix you can hand to a coding agent.
The audit also ignores ranking slips measured on very few impressions. A handful of searches for a misspelt brand name no longer raises a high-severity finding about your homepage.
Also in this release
- Competitors: Ballad re-reads your competitors and tracked AI-assistant questions against your current positioning. It suggests what to add and what no longer fits, with a reason. Pinned competitors stay put. Battlecards, AI-visibility tracking, comparison pages, the audit and Links use the updated list.
- Hooks in Content: "More like this" is now "Work on this" and opens a feedback box. Ballad writes four versions of that hook, original first, and notes what each changed.
- Inbox: The "Ballad is drafting" row sits at the top under Today and appears the moment you hit Regenerate, Create or Draft it.
- Profile photo: From My Account and My Link Page, upload an image, drag and zoom it under a circle, and save the crop. Google photos are now saved too, so avatars stop falling back to a silhouette.
- Slack approvals: A finding the audit closes now closes in Slack straight away. The card-only button is now called Hide.
What changed for existing users
Three things behave differently, and none of them needs setup.
Changelog digests. The default hour moves from 8am to 3am in your timezone. A US team's working day now lands in one release, and its changelog entry is drafted before your morning. Products on the old default move to 3am. Products set to another hour keep it.
Newsletter. Issues are drafted the day before their slot, so you get a day to review and the recap is fresh. Due changelog digests run first. Releases recorded after drafting are added before the issue goes out.
Hand-published articles. An article you published by hand at any path on your site is matched by its live URL. Search Console data, Beacon landings and refreshes pick it up, and Ballad's own links point at the real page.
