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 -
Are these Search Console crawl errors a major concern to new client site?
We recently (4/1) went live with a new site for a client of ours. The client site was originally Point2 before they made the switch to a template site with Real Estate Webmasters. Now when I look into the Search Console I am getting the following Crawl Errors: 111 Server Errors (photos) 104 Soft 404s (blogs, archives, tags) 6,229 Not Found (listings) I have a few questions. The server errors I know not a lot about so I generally ignore. My main concerns are the 404s and not found. The 404s are mostly tags and blog archives which I wonder if I should leave alone or do 301s for each to /blog. For not found, these are all the previous listings from the IDX. My assumption is these will naturally fall away after some time, as the new ones have already indexed. But I wonder what I should be doing here and which will be affecting me. When we launched the new site there was a large spike in clicks ( 250% increase) which has now tapered off to an average of ~85 clicks versus ~160 at time of launch. Not sure if the Crawl Errors have any effect, I'm guessing not so much right now. I'd appreciate your insights Mozzers!
Reporting & Analytics | | localwork0 -
Best to Leave Toxic Links or Remove/Disovow on Site with Low Number of Linking Domains
Our site has only 87 referring domains (with at least 7,100 incoming links). LinkDetox has identified 29% of our back links as being toxic and 14% as being questionable. Virtually all of these links derive from spammy sites. We never received a manual penalty, but ever since the first Penguin penalty in 2012 our search volume and ranking has dropped with some uneven recover in the last 3 years. By removing/disavowing toxic links are we risking that over optimized link text will be removed and that ranking will suffer as a result? Are we potentially shooting ourselves in the foot? Would we be better to spend a few months building quality links from reputable domains before removing disavowing bad links? Or toxic links (as defined by LinkDetox) so bad that it should be a priority to remove them immediately before taking any other step? Thanks, Alan
Reporting & Analytics | | Kingalan10 -
How can we stop Google analytics pulling in data from another site?
We have a few accounts under one Google login. They all have separate Google analytics codes but one of the sites is somehow pulling in some data from another site but the other site has not got the same analytics code on it. Not sure how this is happening and what we can do about this, is it a bug in the Google Analytics system? Any help would be appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | dentaldesign0 -
Google Links Disavow - Does that preclude new links from a domain?
If using Google disavow links tool and you disavow links from a 'domain' does that mean that any 'future or new links' from that domain will be blocked? Answer Yes is good if the domain is spammy but bad if the domain was submitted in error ........ Answer NO is good if the domain was submitted in error but bad if the site is spammy. Does anyone have an answer to this please? Also is there a disavow 'undo' request process available? cheers, Mike
Reporting & Analytics | | shags380 -
Too Many On-Page Links
I'm getting the warning of "Too many on-page links". I have a number of affiliate marketing sites, all Wordpress, all with sidebars. In the header navigation bar is a link that offers "reviews" and links to each product/brand. This is not a drop down link but leads to a page with product links. Also, in the sidebar I have links that also lead to the products/brands. Redundant yes, but in the beginning this seemed to be a good practice in site design. It would be easy to simply remove the widget that contains the link process in the sidebar. The problem may simply be that the sidebar is the same for every page in the site(s). Is this hurting total SEO as my sites are all over 95-percent indexed. One site in particular does very well in traffic and sales so is removing these links potentially going to improve my SEO and ultimately by success? Thanks, Don
Reporting & Analytics | | JavaManOne0 -
Problem when searching for "link:www.mysite.com" vs "link: www.mysite.com"
Why does a search for "link:www.mysite.com" show no results, but when there is a space before www.mysite.com it shows results? The same happens for "link:www.mysite.com" (nothing shows up), but when I search for "link:www.mysite.com/index.php" it returns results. Is there a problem I am missing? Thanks so much!
Reporting & Analytics | | EmilyP0 -
Setting up Goals in Google Analytics that involve a 3rd party site
I've set up several goals for one of my clients in Google Analytics. The ones that relate to things on the site -- such as clicking on the "Contact Us" button -- work just fine. However, I set up one that is tracking when someone clicks on a purchase button, which sends the user to a third party site (PayPal). This one doesn't seem to work. (I purchased and item and the goal was not recorded). Looking to see if I have to do anything different when setting up the goal.
Reporting & Analytics | | EricVallee340