How can I manually import links to Monitor Backlinks?
You can import links from Google Search Console, as well as all the other popular sources, like Majestic, Ahrefs or Moz to your Monitor Backlinks account.
To import your file click "Import links via file upload" icon in Your Links dashboard:
Then upload your file in the new window that opens. To import links from other sources, you need to make sure that the imported file matches the format that MonVery popularMonitor Backlinks doesn't seem to be showing all of my backlinks
There are a few reasons why you might not see some backlinks:
For recent backlinks, (let's say new backlinks that are less than 2 weeks old) the crawlers that we use (and which competitors use as well) won't find all links in real time, as soon as they are created. Some they find faster, and some slower. Usually they recrawl the entire web in about 30 days or more. So for recent links, you just need to wait a bit more to see them all.
Monitor Backlinks shows just one backlink per domainVery popularI am using the default setting of showing one link per referring domain. How do I change it to see more links per referring domain?
If you'd like to see more than 1 link per referring domain, then you can change this setting for domains you've already added, by taking the steps below. Please note that the extra backlinks that appear will count towards the backlink limit on your plan.
First, click on Manage Domains:
Then, check the domain you want to edit, click Settings, then "Set links limit per referring dVery popularIs there a way to sort the backlinks by domain to see how many times a certain domain is linking to our site?
Yes! You'll have to make some adjustments to your account.
First, go to your account settings:
https://monitorbacklinks.com/app/account/general-settings
Then, adjust your number of backlinks per referring domain (the number is set at 1 by default, and the max that you can set it at is 5). This is needed in order for you to see more than 1 backlink per domain. Please note that changing this setting counts against your referring doVery popularA page is showing up as a 404 even though when I visit it manually or with a status checker, it returns a 200 OK response.
Sometimes, a page can show a 404 error response in Monitor Backlinks, even though it appears to have a 200 OK response.
It could be that the Monitor Backlinks crawler has been blocked. We take great care to crawl responsibly and not put any significant burden on servers, but it is of course the right of any website owner to block any and all crawlers.
To check if this is the case, try several different HTTP status checkers (there are many free ones online) and see what responses they show.Very popularHow do I recover lost links that are pointing to 404 pages on my site?
How to find the backlinks that are pointing to 404 pages of your website
Our tool can help you find the backlinks that are pointing to 404 pages of your website. To do that:
go to Your Links dashboard and click New Filter:
Select "Destination page with" in the drop-down menu and then select "is Page with errors/redirects":
![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/e21b0de53Very popularHow can I export and download all or some of my links?
To download or export your backlinks:
go to Your Links:
Select the backlinks you want to export or select "All items" if you want to export all of your links, then click "Export":
Please note that only Premium Plus and above plans can export backlinks.Very popularIs there an easy way to find the links that are pointing to incorrect or deleted pages?
Why would you need to find links pointing to error pages?
Monitor Backlinks can help you easily identify all your live backlinks. Our tool can also help determine links that are not working properly or find bad redirects.
Broken links not only affect your site rank in Google Search, but also waste “link equity or juice” and contribute to a poor user experience. That’s why you should make every effort to find and fix them.
What are the most common URL errors that can affect youVery popularI only want to monitor certain backlinks that I specify - can I do that?
Yes, you can certainly do that.
You should:
Add the domain (you should get guided through this automatically during your signup process. If it didn't work, you can also refer to this article.)
Disable auto discover.
Add your links manually(https://monitorbacklinks.crVery popularWhat does the BNF status mean?
BNF stands for "Backlink not found". It means that when Monitor Backlinks crawled the website it couldn't find a backlink.
If you imported a link, but Monitor Backlinks was not able to find the link, then it could also show BNF.
Monitor Backlinks might not be able to find the link for many reasons:
- the backlink doesn't exist anymore on the site
- the backlink changed its location on the site
- you imported the link with a typo
- you imported a link generated via javascript(httSome readersCan you explain why one of our metrics (eg. Trust Flow, Citation Flow, Spam Score, Mozrank) changed?
These are 3rd party metrics provided by companies like Moz and Majestic that are generally based on the content on your site and the pages linking to your site.
For specifics on how the metrics are calculated, you can Google the metrics as there is plenty of literature on it.
There are a couple of important things to keep in mind:
The metric is not what you should be optimizing for since the goal is to get rankings and traffic. The metric is a 3rd party's approximation of the value of a pFew readersHow do I disable autodiscover of new links?
You might want to disable autodiscover of new links if:
- you are getting close to your link limit on your plan and would like to just monitor existing links
- you are only putting in special links into Monitor Backlinks and you don't want other links to appear
To disable autodiscover:
go to Manage Domains:
select the domain which you would like to disable AutodiscFew readersWhat is your bot / user-agent called?
Our user-agent is MBCrawler/1.0.
This might be useful if you are getting 403 page statuses on your links due to your own bot / crawler / firewall policy. By whitelisting our user-agent, you would allow us to properly crawl your site.Few readersHow can I see all the anchor texts being used to link to my site, sorted by frequency?
Sometimes it can be useful to analyze the anchor text on your backlinks (either the entire set, or some subset based on filters you specify).
Fortunately, Monitor Backlinks is a convenient and powerful tool for doing this.
Click on the Link Analysis tab, and you'll see a "Top Anchor Text" report that will show you the most common anchor texts used to link to your site.
You can click on the "Export as CSV" button to export the entire report for further analysis:
![](https://storage.crispFew readersHow do I see the backlinks from a certain page or domain?
Monitor Backlinks has powerful filters for finding and managing your backlinks. One such filter is the ability to filter for backlinks from a certain page / domain.
Go to Your Links tab:
Click on the "New filter" button:
Select "Linking Page" and put in the word (or the page/domain) you would liFew readersI want to block or whitelist your crawler - how do I do that?
We crawl websites responsibly to provide the backlink status data that is essential for Monitor Backlinks.
You might want to whitelist our crawler if you are blocking some crawlers, and want to make sure that our crawler is able to access your site.
Alternatively, if you are not a Monitor Backlinks user, you might want to just block our crawler to minimize any load on your site (we do crawl responsibly, so any load would be minimal).
There are 2 ways:
Update your robots.txt to block anyFew readersHow can I see links to a certain page on my site?
Go to Your Links:
Click on New filter:
Then select "Link To" in the drop-down menu and type the page that you are looking for links to:Few readersWhere does the overall traffic data come from in Google Analytics?
The traffic data that appears on your Monitor Backlinks overview page can be seen in Google Analytics by checking the following report:
To set it up, take the following steps:
Go to Acquisition > Channels.
Click on "Organic Search" to set up the correct channel grouping.
Change the metric from Users to Sessions.
This shows the number of sessions that are sent to yoFew readersIs it possible to analyze my disavow list only (without influence from other link sources) and apply further filters to it?
Yes, absolutely!
You can filter your backlinks based on the disavow rules that you've inputted into Monitor Backlinks.
For your reference, this is an example of disavow rules in Monitor Backlinks (links from globetv.net are set to be disavowed):
In the backlinks filters, just apply the filter for "disavowed". It will apply the disavow rules to your links:
 on the page.
The page that you see might be different than the original page due to a redirect.
The page might be using javascript to alter the page after it loads.
The way to see if the link does exist is to use an HTML source code viewer, which will show the code as is, before any redirect or javascript loads. There are many free ones that can be easily found byFew readersWhat does "Organic Traffic from SE" under the overview chart mean?
On the "Overview chart", "Search engine traffic" refers to the organic traffic that comes from search engines.
We get the data from Google Analytics. You can see the identical data in Google Analytics:Few readersHow is Monitor Backlinks different from information from Google Anaytics / Google Search Console?
Monitor Backlinks is a completely different thing than Google Analytics.
We provide info on backlinks to your site, along with keyword ranking.
Aside from GA, we use other data sources like Majestic, Moz, along with our own crawlers. We check the link status and let you filter them. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
A few other things worth mentioning:
- Monitor Backlinks lets you add/get data on competitors, which of course is not in GA
- GA doesn't show you all backlinks (not eveFew readersHow can I quickly add notes to multiple links?
You may want to add notes to multiple (or to every) backlinks in your profile but it will take a while because of page load time.
To do it quickly you can export the links and then reimport them with the tags/notes that you want. You don't need to remove the existing links when you reimport them - they'll just get overwritten.
When you import the links, just make sure that you follow the sample that includes a notes column:
.Few readersSome of my Moz metrics appear differently on Monitor Backlinks than on Moz.
We obtain our data directly through the Moz API, so the information should be almost always correct.
With that said, sometimes there can be some discrepancies because:
- we periodically update the Moz metrics (they aren't real-time)
- the Moz website and Moz API don't always return the same data. There are discrepancies between the 2 sources, most likely because the API or website use caching in different ways.Few readersWhat roles and permissions do you have?
Monitor Backlinks has 3 roles:
Administrators have full access to all domains and can manage Team members, including domain assigning.
Project Managers have access (except delete) to domains that were assigned to them.
Clients can only view their domains. You can specify the domains that they have access to so that you can give them access without worrying about them having access to other clients' domains.
You can set up roles and permissions by clicking on your profiFew readersCan Monitor Backlinks detect backlinks when the content of the page is generated dynamically with javascript?
No, Monitor Backlinks can't detect links generated dynamically through javascript.
Social media websites tend to link out using javascript codes instead of regular HTML. That makes it much harder for our web crawlers and also Google's crawlers to find them. They don't have any impact on SEO either, so you shouldn't be concerned about these links. You can manually add such links in your Monitor Backlinks account though, if you want to keep track of them and have a record of their changes.Few readersWhat is the difference between the statuses "Follow" and "Indexed by Google"?
There are some backlinks where you will see that the status is Follow, but the page is not indexed by Google. You might wonder, would it be bad to disavow a link with follow status?
What is the difference between "Follow" and "Indexed by Google"?
"Follow" is an attribute of the backlink, while "page not indexed" is an attribute of the page that the backlink is found on.
"Follow" just means tFew readersCan I filter my backlink file for unique domains?
You can use our Unique Domains CSV Extractor tool to get a list of the unique domains in your backlinks file.
This is particularly useful when you’re doing backlink audits and have a lot of links to analyze. You simply upload a .csv file of your backlinks and this tool will return a list of the unique domains that are liFew readersOops, I deleted my links - can you recover them for me?
So you accidentally deleted your backlink.
Don't worry!
You can access a backup of your links from one month ago.
To download your links from one month ago:
log in your account
select the domain you want the backlinks for:
visit https://monitorbacklinks.com/app/backlinks/backup
You'll get a CSV. export of your backlinks before they were all deleted:
. MB doesn’t rely on the status suggested by other sources. MB crawlers check the status of the link directly.Few readersMonitor Backlinks won't import all my links - why is that?
There are a few potential reasons for this:
Some of the links have already been added in your account. We don't allow duplicate links to be added.
By default we only show one link per domain. When importing, you can choose to see up to 20 links per domain. In that case, more links should be added.
In Your Links section, you can set the number of links per domain in the popup that appears when you click the "Import links via file upload" icon:
, we re-check the status of each of your backlinks every 5 days. If you want to check the status of your links again, you can select them and click the "Re-check" button:Few readersIf I disconnect Google Analytics, will I lose previous data?
No, you will not lose data that has already been drawn from Google Analytics.
If you later reconnect Google Analytics with a different account, then the old data will continue to exist, and the new data will be from the new account.Few readersHow do I disconnect from my Google analytics accounts?
First, click on Manage Domains:
Then click on the icon on the right side of your domain name that you'd like to disconnect Google Analytics for:
Your account will continue to work, and your domain will continue to be monitored, but you will lose many of [the benefitsFew readersCan I create reports to see our links that are indexed by Google?
You can do it by filtering your links for Google Index:
Go to the Your Links section
Click "New filter"
Select "Google Index" from the dropdown menu with the "is Indexed" condition:
Or:
Go to Link Analysis:
![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/e21b0de531a06000/link-anFew readersHow do I delete my domain?
First, click on your domain, and then "Manage Domains":
Then select the domain you want to remove and click "Delete":
Please note that after you delete the domain, you'll be able to add a new domain if you are under your plan limit and you can do it once per month.Few readersHow do I download a list of all backlinks along with competitor links?
By default, Monitor Backlinks shows 1 link per domain. If you want to see and export all the backlinks to your and your competitors' sites, you should go to your account settings and change so that you can instead see up to 5 links. We've found that having more than that creates a lot of noise from sitewide links (egFew readersThe status shown for my "Linking from" or "Link to" page appears incorrect.
The information that Monitor Backlinks provides is the same as the information that search engines and crawlers like Google see. It is the way the page is immediately loaded, before any javascript runs on the page.
If you see some behavior that seems to contradict what Monitor Backlinks is reporting, it's usually because javascript is running on the page.
To verify, you can use our redirect checker: https://monitorbacklinks.com/seo-tools/http-header-status-check(https://monitorbacklinks.coFew readersWhat do the different categories of backlinks mean?
The different categories of backlinks and their description are as follows:
Followed - These are links that are followed and are passing on link juice. Google will consider these links for SEO.
Not Followed - These are links with the nofollow attribute like <a href=”http://www.google.com/”rel=”nofollow”>Google. Google will not consider them for SEO.
Disavowed - These are links that you provide to Google so they can stop considering them for your site’s SEO. You tag such bad linkFew readersCan I see which of our competitors' links we already have?
In the Competitor Links section, any competitors' links that your domain already has will have the tag "Common Backlink:"Few readersWhen is the "or-status-disavowed" filter useful?
The "or-status-disavowed" filter is one which, for it to have any effect, has to be used together with one or more other filters from the backlinks table.
Therefore, backlinks that will be filtered into view when "or-status-disavowed" is used together with another filter, is the collection of all disavowed backlinks and those backlinks not disavowed, meeting the criteria of that other filter.
An instance when this is useful is when one wishes to see the list of all backlinks that are not passiFew readers'Linked to' page shows a 302 status - what does it mean and should anything be done about it?
In the Your Links section, you might find some pages where the 'Linked to' page (the page that the backlink links to) shows a 302 status.
This means that the 'Linked to' page is doing a 302 redirect from one URL (let's call it URL A) to another (let's call it URL B). Because of the redirect, if you click on the page, then it will send you to URL B.
A 302 redirect means that the redirect is temporary. This is in contrast to a 301 redirect, which means that the redirect is permanent.
There areFew readersHow do I see how many visitors a given backlink is sending to my site?
After you connect Google Analytics, you can easily check the number of visits that a backlink is sending to you.
In the Backlinks section, just look at the "Visits" column at the end:Few readersCan I remove some links from Monitor Backlinks in order to stay under my plan's link limit?
If you remove some links, Monitor Backlinks might still find them again in the coming weeks. So you might still find yourself limited when you exceed the number of links your plan allows.
If you don't mind removing those links every once in a while, then sure, you can do it that way.
If you don't want to see any new backlinks and just want to continue monitoring the existing backlinks in your account, another option is to disable autodiscover of new links.
You can do that by:
going to MFew readersThe Google index status that Monitor Backlinks is showing looks incorrect.
We check the index status for the backlinks when we add them in your account, and then automatically re-check them every month. It sometimes happens that the link will get indexed by Google in the meantime, which is why you'll see a difference between what MB shows and the real index status.
To help you easily verify if the status is correct, you can click on the Google icon:
You can also manuallyFew readersI accidentally removed a domain - can you restore the backlinks, keywords, and history?
Unfortunately, we can not restore data for domains. You will need to readd it.
Once you add it again it will pick up last month traffic and rediscover all backlinks. You will lose the keyword rankings progress.Few readers'Linking From' page shows a 302 status - what does it mean and should anything be done about it?
In the Your Links section, you might find some pages where the 'Linking From' page (the page where each backlink exists) shows a 302 status.
This means that the 'Linking From' page is doing a 302 redirect from one URL (let's call it URL A) to another (let's call it URL B). Because of the redirect, if you click on the page, then it will send you to URL B.
A 302 redirect means that the redirect is temporary. This is in contrast to a 301 redirect, which means that the redirect is permanent.
TherFew readersWhat does it mean when the indexing status of a link is gray?
In some cases, when our tool can't detect the index status, we are showing n/a (the grey G icon). That's to avoid showing a wrong status. You can quickly check the index status by clicking on that icon though. You'll be redirected to Google and see right away if the page/domain is indexed.
For the majority of the links, we can detect the G index status, but for a few of them, it's not possible.Few readersThe latest Google Analytics data for the last day is not appearing - why?
There is a 48 hour delay for GA metrics because:
- of time zone
- we have to wait for the current day to end.Few readersHow can I see my "lost" backlinks?
There are many reasons why a backlink can become "lost". For instance, the backlink’s site or page is no longer available or, for some reason, the owner of the linking page decided to delete the content.
You'd want to find your "lost" links to try to reclaim them, as the recovery of lost backlinks is important to maintain and improve the search engine ranking.
How can Monitor Backlinks help me find my "lost" backlinks?
If you want to see lost links in MB, you should:
click "New filtFew readersHow can I see the backlinks that I gained in a certain time period?
To see the backlinks that you gained in a certain time period:
go to Your Links section:
click on New filter:
select "Date Added" in the drop-down menu and then select the dates that you are looking for:
 and BNF (backlink not found).
In that case you might want to delete the link since it no longer exists.
You might wonder whether deleting the link will still let you be alerted if the spammy link/domain comes back to life and starts linking to you again.Few readersWhat does “non-targeted commercial anchor text” mean?
The "non-targeted commercial anchor text" refers to any keywords that are not using your site's brand name or URL.
You probably don't have to do anything about them - we just have a warning to show you when you have links using potentially unnatural anchor text. It's best to have most of your anchor text using your brand name or different combinations of the linked URL, to make everything look natural.
If you have too many links (above 50%) using non-targeted commercial anchor texts, then yoFew readersHow can I use Monitor Backlinks to quickly check the backlinks of different domains?
To do quick spot-checks of different domains, the way to go would be the on-demand backlink checker. This tool lets you quickly check the backlinks of any domain. Each plan comes with a certain number of link checker rows per day.
You can access the backlink checker by going to the Link Checker section:
Then enter the URL of any website and hit the “Check Now” button:
![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/heFew readersI'm having trouble importing links from other sources.
To import links from other sources, you need to make sure that it matches the format that Monitor Backlinks accepts.
Monitor Backlinks accepts .csv or .txt files. You can see examples on the "Import links from file" window that opens when you click the "Import Links" button:
It needs to exactly matchFew readersWe recently had a drop in our search keyword rankings - how do I identify if I have lost backlinks?
Losing high-quality links (especially, if your site doesn't have many of them) can have a substantial impact on your rankings.
Our tool can't tell you what links you've lost before creating your account. But we'll show you all your LIVE backlinks and keep a history of your links, from the time you have created your account.
When you lose a link (or there are any other changes), Monitor Backlinks will send you an email like this:
![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/3fb5727Few readersHow do I edit a backlink?
To edit a backlink simply click on the gear icon next to it and then click "Edit":
You will be able to edit the link on the window that opens:
After you make the necessary edits, click the "Save Backlink" button to save your changes:
![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/e21b0de531a06Few readersIf I change my domain from http to https, do I need to change anything on Monitor Backlinks?
You don't have to make any adjustments in Monitor Backlinks, as we automatically check for links pointing to both http and https version of your site.Few readersHow do I edit or delete my tags?
You can edit or delete the tags that you create for your backlinks by clicking on your profile and clicking "Manage Tags":
Then you'll see a section where you can edit or delete your tags by selecting them and then clicking on the "Delete" or "Edit" buttons:Few readersHow can I add or edit tags on multiple links that are already in Monitor Backlinks?
How to add/edit tags on backlinks
If you want to add tags to one or just a few backlinks in your Monitor Backlinks dashboard, you can do it by selecting the backlinks and then clicking the "Add tags" button:
You can also edit tags by selecting the backlink and clicking the "Edit" button. You can remove or edit the tags in the new window that opens:
. What should we do in this case?
First, verify that the 404 is correct. You can do this by using a couple different HTTP status checkers (there are many free ones online) and seeing the response. (In some rare cases, Monitor Backlinks might say there is a 404 even though the page is definitely returning a 200 response. This is what you should do in that case(https://monitorbacklinks.crisp.help/en/article/a-page-is-showing-up-as-a-404-even-though-when-i-visit-it-manually-or-with-a-status-checker-it-returns-a-200-ok-response-sjFew readersTrust flow and citation flow are appearing differently than what is available on Majestic - why?
Most of the time, the data should appear the same.
Sometimes there can be slight discrepancies because:
the domain is inputted slightly differently (eg. you include a / after your website URL, or you search with/without www )
we obtain Majestic data through their API, which is not necessarily 100% the same as what they are showing to end users and
we periodically update trust flow and citation flow, so the data is not real-time.
we are checking the metrics for the URLFew readersThe wrong IP is appearing for one of my backlinks.
An IP different than the one that you expect can sometimes appear if you are using something like a CDN / cache.
Try looking up the IP using a free IP lookup tool to check whether that is the case.Few readersHow do you prioritize which link out of two from the same domain gets shown (when only 1 link/domain is shown)?
You may have 2 links from the same page to your site (e.g. one is nofollow and the other is follow). You may wonder which one we would show.
We prioritize the first found link. This is how Google works, at least up until several years ago (could be updated now, but Google hasn't provided an update on how it works in this respect): http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718(http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-pFew readers