Discovering broken links to my site
-
How do I find out if other websites are trying to link to my website using a misspelled URL or broken link?
-
One extra resource is this article
http://moz.com/blog/set-it-and-forget-it-seo-chasing-the-elusive-passive-seo-dream
It gives a little more info in researching broken links from other sites, and even gives a great explanation of using the levenshtein distance to automatically correct incoming broken links on the fly.
-
:))
-
Beat me to the punch as I was writing up my response. Thumbs up to you for a good answer that was similar to mine.
-
Depends on the way in which they misspelled things. If they got your domain name correct but messed something up after the slash (i.e. mysite.com/TyposHappne) then you will likely see a notice in Google Webmaster Tools of a 404'd page. At which point you could either ask the webmaster at the other site to fix the link or you could 301 the 404's page to the correct URL. If the incorrect link spells your domain name wrong... well then there's really no easy way to find it. You could potentially run a crawl test on a website that you know does link to you on other pages to see if the test brings up notices of broken links and then check if those broken links were meant for your site. Beyond that I don't believe you can do anything except hope the site administrator or their SEO runs their own tests to check for broken links and then fixes them accordingly.
-
One of the best way to check links that comes to your site is to use backlink checker software (open site explorer). If the main url is mis-spelt i don't think you can find out using the software as the url wouldn't point to your website at all. If you requested the link your self from a website, you can only find out by visiting the website and checking the link.
To check the broken links, I use broken link checker software and i do redirect or fix the links so if there are any links coming through to those pages it'll be fixed or redirected. I use brokenlinkcheck.com or screaming frog to check broken links.
I hope that helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Filter Tracking works fine at staging site but not on LIVE site why?
Hello Expert, For my ecommerce site I want to track filter url's like price range, size, width, color etc and fully filter url should display in google analytic. I have implemented filter tracking at staging server and it works perfectly but on LIVE site it not show me full filter url. Do you guys think any parameter which i have configured in search console affect this? Note - I have configured in this way - http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/93008/how-to-track-a-product-filter-in-the-product-list-view-with-google-analytics My filter url's are given below. And in search console I have configure two parameters. 1) effect - Sort, Crawl - No urls 2) FT - effect- ( - ) , crawl - Let google bot decide. But as per me this parameter is for crawling should not affect tracking right? mysite.com?FP=0&filtSeq=Price&Sort=BS
Reporting & Analytics | | adamjack
mysite.com?FT=7581&filtSeq=Type&Sort=BS
mysite.com?FT=1042&filtSeq=Colour&Sort=BS In robot file nothing is block. In analytic it showing me url till mysite.com only where as in staging it shows me full filter url. Thanks!0 -
The best way to track internal links in Google Analytics
Hi there, we are a retail business and we have invested in quality editorial content which sits in our Blog at ourwebsite.co.uk/blog/ The Blog links to the main site (an online store) and I want to track the 'value' of the blog by how many clicks the blog content generates back to the main store. At the moment we're using this code on the end of every link in the Blog: ?utm_source=Blog&utm_medium=Widget&utm_campaign=FromBlog Does this affect SEO and is there a better way of doing it? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Bee1590 -
Tracking links and duplicate content
Hi all, I have a bit of a conundrum for you all pertaining to a tracking link issue I have run into on a clients site. They currently have over duplicate content. Currently, they have over 15,000 pages being crawled (using Screaming Frog) but only 7,000+ are legitimate pages in the sense of they are not duplicates of themselves. The client is using Omniture instead of Google Analytics and using an advanced tracking system on their site for internal and external links (ictids and ectids) in the URL parameters. This is creating thousands of duplicated pages being crawled by Google (as seen on their Search Console and on Screaming Frog). They also are in the middle of moving over from http to https and have thousands of pages currently set up for both, again, creating a duplicate content issue. What I have suggested for the tracking links is setting up a URL parameter in Search Console for these tracking links. I've also suggested they canonical all tracking links to point to the clean page so the pages that have already been indexed point to the correct clean url. Does this seam like the appropriate strategy? Additionally, I've told them before they submit a new sitemap to Google, they need to switch their website over to https to avoid worsening their duplicate content issue. They have not submitted a sitemap to Google Search Console since March 2015. Thank you for any help you can offer!
Reporting & Analytics | | Rydch410 -
Links On Expired Domains
Does anybody know if a link on an expired domain affects your SEO? I'm just asking because the SEO agency we used before used to create websites and then link to our company - very spammy. We have since ditched this agecny, however they wanted an extortionate amount to remove these links. Therefore, we decided to wait until these domains expired and then the links wouldn't exist. However, I am now completing a link audit and some of these sites are still appearing in the results (obtained from Link Research Tools) but I cannot access the links because the domains have expired. Can anyone help?
Reporting & Analytics | | AAttias0 -
Open site explorer or other backlinkchecker https
Hi MozFans, I would like to check the backlink profile of https deeplinks on a site.
Reporting & Analytics | | MaartenvandenBos
In open site explorer this isn't working: Link Is there a other way to check the backlinks of a https website? cheers,
Maarten0 -
Want to link to GA profile, but the one I want is not showing in drop-down
How can I manually add the correct Google Analytics data in to my account? The two options I see on the drop-down are not the ones I want to select and I don't see a way to do it manually. Help!
Reporting & Analytics | | Uniqueson0 -
Open Site Explorer Discrepency
Hi, I'm just starting to look into this tool as a result of the need to analyse some work that is being carried out on my site by an external SEO company that is charging absolute top dollar. I'm sure it's a simple answer, but looking at the attached image you will see that the total links is shown as 219 which is described as links from all sources. However the report that is on the page shows only 44 links which would appear to be a report based on the same criteria. What is the difference in the numbers please? Simon siteExplorer.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | simonphumphries0 -
Tagging URLs Linkbuilding and anchor links
Hi, I am going to publish a press release on a number of different websites. First and foremost, I want to build anchor links back to website for specific keywords. Secondly I want to measure clickthrus from each site using parameter tracking in GA. I want to know if I put in a url with ?utm_source=xxx, will this have any impact upon my linkbuilding efforts? i.e. will search engines attribute the keyword to the long url with tracking or the url without tracking. I understand that everything from the ? mark is ignored. However, i just want to double check before I publish release. Thanks for your help. Mik
Reporting & Analytics | | increation0