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How to find exactly which pages on a domain have links to your site?

littlegiant

5:45 pm on Aug 15, 2013 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

I'm currently engaged in the arduous and -from what I've been reading- utterly pointless link removal campaign trying to de-penguinize a website I've had for nine years. I've got a spreadsheet all set up with a list of domains linking to my site gleaned from WMT and I'm using the non-paid versions of Majestic SEO and OSE to supplement my list.

The problem I keep running into is I know a domain is supposed to have links to my site but when I visit that domain, I often run into a dead end with no links to my site to be found anywhere.

Sorry if this is a stupid question but how do I find out exactly which web pages on a domain are linking to mine?

I just went through a ridiculous rigamarole with the webmaster of a blog who put a link to my site in their blogroll and when I sent them a link removal request, they said they couldn't find the links to my site even though they were on every page on their site as plain as day in their blogroll (a completely unrelated website I might add). I then had to write a handholding step-by-step walkthrough reply to point the webmaster to their blog roll and point out the link to my site. They finally found them and removed the links.

I want to at least try to manually remove all links before disavowing them but if I can't find them, what do I do?

Also, I'm determined to go through this link removal campaign despite all the reports that it doesn't work. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't at least try.

aakk9999

5:59 pm on Aug 15, 2013 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

Top Contributors Of The Month

how do I find out exactly which web pages on a domain are linking to mine?

There are several ways and all of them are time consuming.

In WMT, go to "Links to your site" section and then under the "Who links the most" column click on "More". You will get a table with a list of domains linking to you.

If you click on a particular domain, you will get a list of pages (on your site) where this domain links to.

Now click on your URL on that list. Google will display another page where under the "Links" column there will be a list of URLs from that domain. These URLs are where Google found links to this page on your site.

You would need to repeat this for every domain linking to you, and for every page reported the external domain links to.

Please do note that it is possible for Google to report the link to your site, but it cannot be found on the external page as it is possible that the external page has been changed since Google has crawled their site and updated the information it has.

If you are trying to find a link to your site that is not reported by Google in WMT but you are sure the external domain has your link, then you can crawl the external domain with crawl tool such as Xenu and see if your domain is present in that link report.

dethfire

6:07 pm on Aug 15, 2013 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Top Contributors Of The Month

ahrefs has a real nice feature that allows this

jakebohall

6:09 pm on Aug 15, 2013 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

If it makes you feel better, the link removal campaigns do work, and are essential in submitting a reconsideration request... so you are on the right track.

I find the best results at getting penalties lifted by attempting multiple removal attempts, getting approximately 60 - 70% of links removed, and then disavowing the rest. Generally we wait at least a week after the disavow is submitted, just in case things appear to be recovering. If they don't show positive signs, we then prepare a reconsideration request with all of the documentation showing our efforts.

I highly recommend pulling a list of links from aHrefs, Majestic, OpenSiteExplorer, Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools, old link developers you hired, and possible even Yandex and Blekko to get a comprehensive list of all your backlinks. Then go through each of them to determine if they are good/bad based upon anchor text and placement. If they look bad... remove/disavow.. if you could easily defend them as naturally placed then leave them alone.

Hope this helps!

Also, I've found it is less frustrating and more helpful to the webmasters if you send a screenshot showing where the link is versus trying to explain or navigate them to it.

littlegiant

6:27 pm on Aug 15, 2013 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

@aakk9999, Thank you very much! Exactly what I was looking for.

@jakebohall, Thanks anyway but I never received a manual penalty or unnatural links notification of any kind nor is there any in Manual Actions section of WMT so it is my understanding -from the extensive reading I've done here on this forum- that a reconsideration request is not necessary. I'm only trying to recover from a Penguin algorithmic penalty. I only made the spreadsheet for my own convenience (and sanity).

jakebohall

6:50 pm on Aug 15, 2013 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

If you don't have any manual action, then you shouldn't need to file the reconsideration request.... Just do the link cleanup and disavow what you can't remove.