// what changed
Deck v1.1 follow-up
Each claim in deck v1.1 and its seven issue lists, tested again on the live sites.
Each crawl-based technical claim in deck v1.1 and every row of its seven issue lists was tested again on the live sites. The deck's field speed figures (real visitor data: INP, the delay after a tap or click, of 282 ms and 462 ms) were not re-tested. This report uses only lab speed data (test runs on one machine). CONFIRMED means the claim reproduced. CONFIRMED, larger means the claim reproduced, with a higher count. CHANGED means the site has changed since the deck's crawl. NOT REPRODUCED means a fresh test gives a different result. Search, backlink and AI-answer figures from third-party tools (Semrush, Ahrefs, the AI visibility dashboard) were not re-measured with the same tools. Part I gives fresh third-party figures from a different provider.
B.1 The JavaScript-link claim
The deck says 239 pages are "reachable only by JS links" (links that need script to run), including "78 of 84 Stack articles and all 58 blog posts are linked only through JavaScript". The deck also says "67 of its 69 article links are JavaScript." This claim did not reproduce.
- In the server HTML of /the-stack, 17 distinct articles are linked with plain
<a href>links, and the rendered page (after JavaScript runs) links the same 17. - With JavaScript turned off in the browser, the target link was present on the source page in 5 of 5 tested pairs (a linking page and its target).
- Of the 239 URLs in the deck list, 177 have plain HTML links from other pages, 61 have no crawlable link at all (a link search crawlers can follow), and 1 is linked only after JavaScript runs.
- The deck list counts more "JS inlinks" (links pointing to a page) than total inlinks for 163 of its 239 URLs (for one Stack article, 768 JS inlinks against 715 total). One likely cause is that the deck's crawl tool, using a plain fetch, received the firewall challenge page instead of the real HTML (A-5, plain HTTP clients get no content). This cause is not proven.
The real problem is A-2 (hub pagination). Older articles lose their hub links because the hubs paginate with buttons, not because the links need JavaScript; 25 Stack articles end up with no link at all. Ticket 02 in the deck backlog should change from "plain HTML links to the 239 JS-only pages" to "crawlable pagination links on the Stack, blog, research and commentary hubs".
B.2 Claim register
| Deck claim | Result | Fresh evidence |
|---|---|---|
| 239 pages reachable only through JS links | NOT REPRODUCED | 1 JS-only; 177 have HTML links; 61 have no link (B.1) |
| Stack hub: 67 of 69 outlinks in JS | NOT REPRODUCED | 17 articles linked in server HTML, the same 17 rendered |
| 83 pages titled "The Stack | Grayscale" | CONFIRMED, larger | 106 indexable pages |
| Every Stack article has two H1s | CONFIRMED | 108 of 108 (each has two H1 tags, the main page heading) |
| 260 pages share "A Leading Crypto Asset Manager" | CONFIRMED, larger | 263 indexable pages (research 182) |
| Some metas carry zero-width characters | CONFIRMED, larger | 4 research meta descriptions; body text of all 410 indexable www and research pages, which can break copy and paste (A-10) |
| 142 www pages and 37 of 37 etfs pages have no canonical | CONFIRMED, larger | 166 www (including 25 Stack articles with no link, A-2), 37 of 37 etfs. A canonical tag names the preferred address of a page. |
| 236 parameter URLs have no canonical | CONFIRMED | 236 of 236 |
| 80 sitemap URLs redirect (69) or error (11) | CONFIRMED | 79 of 80 still non-indexable (the deck list has 68 redirects, 11 errors and 1 page at 200) |
| 146 sitemap orphans (www 70, research 45, Institute 31) | CHANGED | 56 still orphans (no other page links to them), 24 now linked, 66 no longer in any sitemap |
| Only etfs is wired into the main sitemap index | NOT REPRODUCED | No sitemap index (a file that lists other sitemaps) exists on www. Each host's robots.txt (the file that sets crawl rules) lists one sitemap; the ZCSH site's robots.txt points to the etfs sitemap |
| 70 linked URLs return 404; 196 internal links hit a redirect | CHANGED | 68 now return 404 (page not found) and 197 now redirect; 7 return 403 (access denied); 271 of 272 rows keep the same status class (3xx redirects, 4xx errors) |
| Institute date archives noindex, first post title as H1, no canonical | CONFIRMED | 7 of 7 archives (A-18) |
| Institute /category links 302 | CONFIRMED | 302 (temporary redirect), then 301 (permanent redirect) (A-17) |
| Internal links to www carry UTMs | CONFIRMED, larger | 2,815 links from Institute carry UTM tags (campaign tracking codes) (A-15) |
| Two staging hosts are linked and crawlable | CHANGED | dev.grayscaleinstitute.com returns 401 (password required); grayscale-etf-site.vercel.app returns 404. Links remain: the cookie banner lists the vercel.app and verndale-local.com hosts on 450 pages, and 2 Institute pages link to dev.grayscaleinstitute.com |
| Footer ETHE link starts with "hthttps://" | CONFIRMED | 139 pages (A-16) |
| Research soft 404s at /reports/ftn1 | CONFIRMED, larger | Soft 404 (an error page that returns 200): 3 of 3 invented URLs under /reports/ and /market-commentary/ return 200 (A-7) |
| Only Institute has structured data | CONFIRMED | 0 of 450 indexable pages on the other hosts (A-14) |
| Home H1 is the course promo | CONFIRMED | "Digital Asset Investing Fundamentals Course" |
| /gbtc H1 is "GBTC"; meta is 29 characters | CONFIRMED | Same as the claim; /btc also uses a ticker H1 |
| GBTC fee is 1.50% | CONFIRMED | etfs /gbtc management fee (annual charge) 1.50%; /btc 0.15% |
| etfs.grayscale.com/zcsh 308s to thezcashetf.com | CONFIRMED | 308 (a permanent redirect) to www.thezcashetf.com |
| 60 dead URLs in the redirect map | CONFIRMED, larger | 60 of 60 still 404; 975 dead historic URLs in total (A-4) |
| ETF sitemap leaves out GDLC, ETCO, BPI, BTCC | CONFIRMED | All 4 are missing (A-8) |
| www sitemap lists /education (dead) and the glossary twice | CONFIRMED | /education returns 404; the glossary URL is listed twice (A-8) |
| Main pages show the sitemap load time as last change | CONFIRMED | 22 of 105 www rows share one timestamp about 10 minutes before the sitemap file was saved |
| 14 dead /globalassets/ PDFs cited by AI | CONFIRMED, larger (dead PDFs) | 705 of 738 historic PDFs end in a 404 (704 with no redirect); AI citations were not re-measured |
| Institute robots.txt is a published draft that blocks PDFs | CONFIRMED | Draft notes and a PDF block (A-22) |
| Firewall challenges cloud requests | CONFIRMED for HTTP clients | 429 (too many requests) even from a desktop connection, not a cloud server, with curl, so some AI tools may read no content (A-5) |
| Mobile lab score 45 and LCP 18.0 s on the home page | CONFIRMED (score); LCP within the range of runs | Median score 45 (45 to 45); median LCP (time to show the main content) 19.8 s (14.9 to 19.9 s) in 3 Lighthouse runs, so 18.0 s lies inside the range (A-9) |
B.3 Changes to the deck's phase one backlog
| Deck item | Change |
|---|---|
| 02 Plain HTML links to 239 JS-only pages | Replace with crawlable pagination links (A-2) |
| 05 Link 146 orphans | Use the fresh list: 56 orphans, plus the 25 Stack articles with no link |
| 06 Lock both staging hosts | Done on the hosts; remove the 2 Institute links to dev.grayscaleinstitute.com and the staging domains in the cookie banner's domain list |
| 01 301 the 45 usable rows of the 60 dead URLs | Keep, and add the 270 dead page paths and the /globalassets/ PDFs (A-4) |
| New | Consent tags on etfs (A-1), Institute test text and privacy line (A-3, C-1), research soft 404s (A-7), zero-width characters (A-10) |
G.4 Deck issue lists, checked row by row
| File | Rows | Result |
|---|---|---|
| grayscale-redirect-map.verified.csv | 60 | STILL_404 60 |
| gs-js-only-inlinks.verified.csv | 239 | HAS_HTML_INLINKS 177, NO_INLINKS_AT_ALL 61, CONFIRMED_JS_ONLY 1 |
| gs-linked-redirects-errors.verified.csv | 272 | SAME_CLASS 271, CHANGED_403_TO_302 1 |
| gs-onpage-issues.verified.csv | 470 | SAME 469, CHANGED 1 |
| gs-parameter-urls-no-canonical.verified.csv | 236 | CONFIRMED_NO_CANONICAL 236 |
| gs-sitemap-nonindexable.verified.csv | 80 | CONFIRMED 79, NOW_200 1 |
| gs-sitemap-orphans.verified.csv | 146 | REMOVED_FROM_SITEMAP 66, CONFIRMED_ORPHAN 56, NOW_LINKED 24 |