Direct answer: The 36 article pages carry 270 outbound links, but split apart: 120 are social platforms (Weibo, WeChat, Douyin share buttons), 40 are filing or regulator links (beian.miit.gov.cn and similar template links), and only 110 are citations to external content. None points to a government or academic source (zero .gov or .edu hosts).
Thirty of the 36 pages carry at least one citation; six have none (E03's five pages and E19's one). The single page with the most citations is E14 page 5 (eight citations on five hosts). Only six of the 110 citations use nofollow (5.5%).
Method: split outbound links into citations, social and filing
The study reuses the 36 article pages cached on 2026-11-03 08:40–08:41 (10 sites) with zero network requests. External means a different registrable domain; subdomains stay internal. Outbound links are then split into social platforms (Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Bilibili, LinkedIn and similar), search engines (Baidu, Google and similar) and filing or regulator domains (beian.miit.gov.cn, miit.gov.cn, 12377.cn and similar); the rest count as citations, with .gov/.edu targets and nofollow recorded separately.
| Item | Rule | Boundary |
|---|---|---|
| Outbound link | Different registrable domain | Subdomains internal |
| Citation | Outbound and not social/search/filing | Does not judge support |
| Gov/academic | Host ends with .gov/.edu/.gov.cn/.edu.cn | Filing domains excluded |
| Social/filing | Fixed domain lists | Lists are finite |
| nofollow | Citation with rel containing nofollow | Weight effects not judged |
Result: six in ten outbound links are not citations
| Category | Links | Share of 270 | Hosts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Citations | 110 | 40.7% | 66 |
| Social platforms | 120 | 44.4% | — |
| Filing/regulator | 40 | 14.8% | — |
| Search | 0 | 0% | — |
| Gov/academic (subset) | 0 | 0% | — |
Social share buttons appear on nearly every page and are the main source of "many outbound links"; filing links are footer template links repeated once per page. After removing both, the median page has just two citations.
Six pages have no citations
E03's five pages and E19's page have no external citation once social and filing links are removed. E03's outbound links are all social shares and filing links; E19 has a single contact-page link. The most cited page is E14 page 5 (eight citations on five hosts), followed by E22's five pages (six citations each on two hosts).
| Page | Outbound | Citations | Citation hosts |
|---|---|---|---|
| E14-5 | 33 | 8 | 5 |
| E22-1 to E22-5 | 7 each | 6 each | 2 each |
| E03-1 to E03-5 | — | 0 | 0 |
| E19-1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
nofollow and source structure
Only six of the 110 citations carry nofollow (5.5%), so almost all are plain links; none points to a government, standards body or university domain. On the question "can a reader find a primary source in the article", this sample answers: there are citations, but almost no authoritative ones.
Relationship to link structure and anchor text
Study 49 recorded 270 outbound links and 113 external hosts across the same 36 pages; this study splits that set — 44.4% social, 14.8% filing, only 40.7% citations. The anchor-text study found highly repetitive labels. Together, the outbound side of these articles looks more like template sharing than a list of sources.
What this means for acceptance
- Separate "outbound links" from "citations". Only 110 of 270 are citations, so a single total cannot stand for credibility.
- Require at least one authoritative source per page. This sample has zero gov/academic sources and six pages with no citation at all.
- Social share buttons are not sources. The 120 social links are page features, not evidence.
- Filing links are template. The 40 filing links appear on every page and must not count as citations.
- Track nofollow separately. At 5.5% it is not the main issue; the missing authoritative source is.
Limits
- Finite lists: social/search/filing classification uses fixed domains, so an unlisted host inflates citations; the citation count is an upper bound.
- Link counts only: whether a citation supports the text, or whether it opens, is not judged.
- Page level: footer and navigation are included; body is not separated.
- One snapshot: cached on 2026-11-03; redesigns are not rechecked.
- 10 sites, 36 pages: a pilot, no industry claim.
Data and reproduction
Anonymised data: equipment-article-citations-2026.csv (36 rows × 12 columns: outbound links and hosts, citations and citation hosts, gov/academic, social, filing, search, nofollow citations and whether a citation exists). The repository keeps docs/research/2026-11-article-citations.csv.
Parser: scripts/article_citation_probe.py; unit tests: scripts/test_article_citation_probe.py (no network, ten tests). Run:
python -m unittest scripts.test_article_citation_probe
Related: the article link-structure pilot, the article anchor-text pilot, and the article body-structure pilot.
Sources and definitions
- Article cache: 36 pages from 10 sites in study 45 (2026-11-03 08:40–08:41).
- External: registrable-domain comparison; citations, social, filing and search use fixed domain lists.
- Scan: 2026-11-06, zero network requests.
Related: the article author-signal pilot.