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  4. Inbound Links

Inbound Links

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Links via Redirect are inbound links pointing to a URL which redirects to the site you are tracking or researching. If your redirects are set up appropriately and the pages are similar in nature, then link equity will be preserved.
  • After being found, newly discovered links have the ability to be populated into our index in about 3 days. It may take longer for us to discover backlinks to your site based on factors like crawlability of the referring pages, as well as the quality of the links and the referring pages. It is a good idea to check to see if we've indexed the referring page on which that link is found. If we haven't indexed the referring page yet, you won't see your link in our index. You can use Link Tracking Lists to help monitor the discovery of your backlinks. Read more about how we index the web and how to investigate if we're not finding your links.
  • Once you’ve checked that the referring page can be indexed we advise using Link Tracking Lists to help monitor the discovery of your backlinks.
  • No, Moz does not have a way to see links on your site which point to other sites.

What's Covered?

In this guide you’ll learn more about the Inbound Links section of Link Explorer. If you’re looking to troubleshoot why inbound links to your site haven’t been found, please see our troubleshooting guide.

Quick Links

What Are Inbound Links?

Also known as backlinks, inbound links are hyperlinks from a page on the web to a page on your site. Search engines use these to understand content and to gauge the importance of pages and websites.

Find Inbound Links With Link Explorer

Link Explorer inbound links menu location.

To find inbound links in Link Explorer, follow these steps within the Inbound Links section:

  1. Use the drop-down to select the scope of your search and see data for a root domain, subdomain, or exact page
  2. Enter the site you'd like to research into the search box and click Analyze
  3. Select Followed on the right-hand side to filter by followed links
  4. You'll see a list of backlinks sorted by descending Domain Authority (DA)
Within inbound links you can query to see inbound links for a root domain, subdomain, or exact page.

Filter by Link Source

Looking for links in your backlink profile from a particular site? You can filter by Link Source by entering the site of the backlink.

Please note: When a Link Source is specified, we will show you the top 10 links from that source. In addition, it’s important to note that when a sort or filter is applied, the tool will look at the top 100,000 links. It doesn’t matter what domain these links are from. For example, if you have 5 million links and sort by PA, the tool will look at the top 100,000 links based on PA.

Filter by link source to see inbound links from a specific site.

Filter by Link Type & State

You can filter by Link Type to find follow or nofollow links, or links sent via redirect. Or you can filter by Link State so see links which are active or lost. This is particularly handy if you want to find follow links that have been marked as lost in our index.

You have the option to filter by link state and link type to further segment your data.

View More Info

Click on the arrow button in the More Info column to the right to see more information about a particular link. When the view is expanded, we will show you the date the link was first seen by our crawlers, the date the link could no longer be found, and where on your site that link points.

Click the arrow in the more info column to see when we first discovered a link.

Add to Link Tracking List

Link Tracking Lists can be helpful for setting goals, tracking, and analyzing your link building progress.

To add a link to your list, follow these steps:

  1. Select the check box next to a link
  2. Click Add to Link Tracking List
Use the check boxes to select links you'd like to track and then add them to a link tracking list using the button on the top right.

Export Your Data

You can export your data to CSV using the button on the right. If you have filters applied, the tool will export the filtered results. Once your report is ready, you can download it from the Export Notifications flag on the top right.

Please note: The number of rows you’re able to export from Link Explorer is dependent on your subscription level.

The Export CSV button is located to the right of the filter options in Inbound Links.

Understanding Link Explorer Terminology

More definitions are available in our Glossary.

Domain Authority (DA) - Domain Authority is a Moz proprietary metric from 1-100 which predicts how well a domain will rank in Google based on a machine learning algorithm of link metrics.
Page Authority (PA) - Page Authority is a Moz proprietary metric from 1-100 which predicts how well a page will rank in Google based on a machine learning algorithm of link metrics.
Inbound Links (backlinks) - An incoming link from a page on another website back to your own site.
Spam Score - Represents the percentage of sites with similar features we've found to be penalized or banned by Google. This does not mean that the site is spammy. It’s best to use this is a guide to potentially spammy sites for further investigation.
Anchor Text- The visible, clickable text in a hyperlink.
Followed Links - Links that do not have a nofollow tag, these are crawled and indexed by the search engines.
Nofollow Links - Links that instruct crawlers not to follow links on a particular page or specific links. A nofollow directive can be added to a page or link on a page.
Links via Redirect - Inbound links pointing to a URL which redirects to the site you are tracking or researching. If page X links to page Y and page Y has a redirect to page Z, the link from page X will show up as a link "via redirect" to page Z.

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