I just see this now. If that is the case, the solution would be to use sourceSearch | link= | a => the variable a will be > 0 if one or more instances of the “link=” string are found. But sourceSearch can only be used if the plain text is in the page source.
Also, I am sure no website checks for the number of AssertElementPresent! Because all AssertElementPresent run on the same website DOM, so the page itself is loaded only once. You could even use a 1000 AssertElementPresent in a row and this will not raise any red flag.