Backlink Exchanged Not Selecting Content-Rich Authority Pages as Link Targets

Summary

After resolving a sitemap issue, I've noticed what appears to be a different problem. The Automatic Backlinks feature no longer seems to generate backlinks to the pages listed in my sitemap, despite those pages being substantial, content-rich resources.

Current Behaviour

The main site is affected https://peterashbysmith.com.

I gave Arvow a custom sitemap with only the pages I want to strengthen. These are long-form, evergreen articles that form the core of the site's authority.

Despite this, the Automatic Backlinks feature has not generated backlinks to any of these pages since June.

Before the sitemap issue was fixed, Arvow readily created backlinks to older blog posts elsewhere on the site. Now that only my preferred pages are available, backlink generation appears to have stopped altogether.

Why I Think This May Be a Bug

This makes me wonder whether the backlink engine is filtering or overlooking certain types of pages rather than simply following the sitemap.

The pages in my sitemap are not thin content. Most are comprehensive articles containing several thousand words of original material and are arguably stronger backlink destinations than many of the older blog posts that previously received links.

If these pages are being excluded by the selection algorithm, there may be criteria that are unintentionally preventing high-quality authority pages from being chosen.

Questions

Could you confirm:

• Are the pages in my sitemap being successfully crawled and indexed by Arvow?

• Are they being evaluated as eligible backlink targets?

• If they are being excluded, what criteria are causing that decision?

Why This Matters

Many users deliberately concentrate their SEO strategy around evergreen authority pages rather than chronological blog posts.

If the backlink engine prefers certain page types or structures, users may be unable to direct authority towards the pages that matter most, even when those pages are explicitly included in their sitemap.

Understanding how backlink targets are selected, or identifying a bug if one exists, would make the Automatic Backlinks feature much more predictable and effective.