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SEOPart of: Broken links and status codes

Broken backlinks: find the links you lost and win them back

Broken backlinks are links from other sites to pages on yours that no longer exist. How to find them with Search Console and a bulk status check, redirect each one to the right page, and stop new ones appearing.

getReport teamUpdated 26 Sept 202610 min read

Broken backlinks are links from other websites that point at pages on your site that no longer exist, so the visitor who clicks lands on a 404 and the link passes nothing on. You cannot edit the other site, and you do not have to: a 301 redirect from the dead address to its closest live equivalent makes the link work again. This guide shows how to find your broken backlinks with Search Console and a bulk status check, decide where each should go, and set up the redirects. It is part of the wider guide to finding and fixing broken links.

Quick answer

  • Export your most-linked pages from Search Console → Links → Top linked pages (external links).
  • Check them in bulk: paste the target URLs into the bulk URL checker and filter for "not found".
  • For each dead URL, find the closest live page on the same topic and add a 301 redirect to it. Restore the page if it was deleted by mistake.
  • No close equivalent? Let the URL answer 404 or 410. Do not redirect it to the home page.
  • Point each redirect straight at the final page, so old links take one hop, not three.
  • Prevent the next batch: add redirects every time you rename, move or delete a page, and keep them.

A backlink is a link from another site to yours. It becomes broken when the page it points at stops answering: you deleted the page, changed its URL without a redirect, moved to a new CMS with a different URL structure, or the linking site mistyped the address. The link sits unchanged on the other site, and every click and every crawl ends on your 404 page.

It is one of three kinds of broken link, and the only one fixed on your own server rather than in your content:

KindWhere the link livesWhere you fix it
Broken backlinkOn another site, pointing at youYour server: a redirect
Broken internal linkOn your own pagesYour content and templates
Broken outbound linkOn your pages, pointing at another siteYour content: replace or remove

Link building people call the fix "link reclamation": recovering the value of links you already earned, which is usually faster than earning new ones.

A link to a page that answers 404 leads nowhere. Google drops URLs that answer 404 from its index, and it has said since its 2011 Search Central post "Do 404s hurt my site?" that 404s on some URLs do not harm how the rest of the site ranks. So a broken backlink is not a penalty. It is a loss:

  • The link's value is gone. Links are one of the signals Google uses to judge a page. A link to a missing page cannot pass that signal on; a 301 redirect to an equivalent page can, because Google treats a permanent redirect as a strong sign that the target replaces the old URL.
  • Referral visitors bounce. People who click a link in an article, a directory or a forum post expect the thing the link promised. A 404 page loses most of them.
  • The problem grows unseen. Nobody tells you when another site's link breaks. Large removals, such as a discontinued product range or a redesign, can break hundreds at once.

Not every broken backlink is worth fixing. A spam directory linking to a URL that never existed can stay 404. The ones worth your time are links from real sites, to pages that used to exist and had a clear topic. 404 errors and SEO covers which 404s to fix and which to leave.

No single report lists them, but two sources combined get you most of the way.

1. Export your most-linked pages from Search Console

In Google Search Console, open Links. Under External links, the Top linked pages table lists the pages on your site that other sites link to most, with the number of linking sites. Click Export external links and choose the latest or sample links for a list that includes the linking pages. Search Console shows target URLs as Google last saw them, including ones that no longer work.

Bing Webmaster Tools has a similar Backlinks report, and third-party SEO tools list backlinks with their target status. Any of these gives you a list of target URLs.

2. Check the target URLs in bulk

Paste the target URLs, up to 1,000 per run, into the bulk URL checker. It requests each with GET, follows up to 10 redirects and labels every row: OK, redirect, redirect chain, not found, server error, noindex or unreachable. Filter to not found for the broken backlinks, and to redirect chain for old links that still work but take several hops. The CSV export gives you a working sheet for the next step.

3. Add the 404s Google and visitors already hit

  • Search Console → Pages → "Not found (404)" lists URLs Google tried to crawl and got a 404. Inspect an example URL: URL Inspection often shows the referring page that led Google there.
  • Your server's access log shows every 404 with its Referer header when the browser sends one. Requests to missing pages with a referrer on another domain are broken backlinks with real clicks. The log analyser sums up the 404s each bot keeps hitting in your browser, without uploading the file.
  • Analytics landing-page reports filtered to your 404 page's title show which missing URLs people arrive at.

URLs that appear in more than one source, and those with links from sites you recognise, go to the top of the list.

Decide where each URL should go

Work through the list and give each dead URL one of three answers:

  1. Restore the page if it was deleted by mistake or still has a purpose. The links work again with no redirect.
  2. 301-redirect it to the closest live equivalent: the successor product, the merged article, the category the product belonged to, the new address of a renamed post. The target should satisfy someone who clicked the original link.
  3. Let it answer 404 or 410 when nothing on the site replaces it. That is the honest answer, and Google handles it well.

The Wayback Machine at web.archive.org usually shows what an old URL used to contain, which makes the choice quick. Avoid redirecting everything to the home page: Google treats redirects to an unrelated page as soft 404s, so the link value is lost anyway, and visitors land somewhere they did not ask for. 404 vs 410 vs redirect has the decision rules in more detail.

Add the redirects

Write the decisions into a two-column list, old URL and new URL, then turn it into rules for your server.

On nginx, a map keeps a long list readable:

nginx
# http block
map $request_uri $backlink_target {
    /blog/boot-sizing-2023/   /blog/boot-sizing/;
    /shop/alpina-classic/       /shop/alpina-pro/;
}

# server block
if ($backlink_target) {
    return 301 $backlink_target;
}

On Apache, in .htaccess at the site root, above any CMS rules:

Apache
Redirect 301 /blog/boot-sizing-2023/ /blog/boot-sizing/
Redirect 301 /shop/alpina-classic/ /shop/alpina-pro/

For a long list, the redirect generator turns old and new URLs into exact-match rules for Apache, nginx, Cloudflare Bulk Redirects, Netlify, Vercel and Caddy in your browser, with chains collapsed. In WordPress, a redirect plugin or the redirect manager in your SEO plugin imports the same list as CSV. In Shopify, use the URL redirects screen in the admin, which also accepts a CSV import. The 301 redirects guide covers the options per platform.

Point every redirect at the final page

If /old/ already redirects to /older/, which redirects to /new/, send /old/ straight to /new/. Each hop adds a round trip for the visitor, and Google follows at most 10 before giving up. After a migration, old backlinks are where chains pile up; redirect chains after a migration shows how to find every hop.

A redirect is enough for search engines. For a handful of important links, such as a partner, a press article or a university page, it is still worth asking the site owner to update the link to the new address. It saves their readers a hop and protects the link if your redirect is ever removed.

How to verify

  • Paste the old URLs back into the bulk URL checker: each should show one 301 and then a 200, or a 404 or 410 where you chose that.
  • Run the redirect checker on a few of the most valuable old URLs to see every hop and the canonical of the final page.
  • Over the following weeks, Search Console's "Not found (404)" count for those URLs falls as Google recrawls them. Keep the report: it is your before-and-after.
  • Redirect as part of every URL change. Renaming a post, moving a product to a new category or changing the permalink structure should include the 301 in the same step.
  • Keep redirects for as long as the links exist. A clean-up that deletes "old" redirect rules brings the broken backlinks back the same day. Google's documentation on site moves recommends keeping redirects for at least a year; for pages with good links, keep them indefinitely.
  • Plan migrations with a redirect map of every old URL, and check it in bulk after launch. The website migration guide has the full checklist.
  • Check your top linked pages each quarter in the bulk URL checker. It takes five minutes.

Common mistakes

  • Redirecting every dead URL to the home page. Google treats it as a soft 404 and visitors leave. Choose the closest equivalent or let the 404 stand.
  • Using a 302 for a permanent move. A temporary redirect tells Google the old URL may come back. Use 301 or 308 for pages that have moved for good.
  • Fixing only the links you can see in one tool. No backlink list is complete; combine Search Console, your logs and a backlink tool.
  • Chains after several redesigns. Update old rules so each points at today's URL.
  • Removing redirects after a year on pages that still have valuable links.

Questions people ask

Export the top linked pages from Search Console's Links report, paste the target URLs into a free bulk status checker such as getReport's bulk URL checker, and filter for "not found". Add the 404 URLs from Search Console's Pages report and from your server's access log, where a referrer on another domain means someone clicked a real link. Together these cover most broken backlinks worth fixing.

Should I redirect a broken backlink to my home page?

No, unless the linked page really was about the whole site. Google treats redirects to an unrelated page as a soft 404, so the link passes no more value than a 404 would, and visitors land somewhere they did not ask for. Redirect to the closest page on the same topic, or let the URL answer 404 or 410 when nothing replaces it.

Not directly. A backlink to a page that answers 404 does not trigger a penalty or harm the rest of the site. It simply stops passing value and loses the visitors who click it. Redirecting it with a 301 to an equivalent live page recovers both, which is why fixing broken backlinks is one of the quicker SEO wins on an older site.

For as long as the link exists. Google's site-move guidance recommends keeping redirects for at least a year, but backlinks on other sites rarely get updated, so a rule removed later breaks the link again the same day. Redirect rules cost almost nothing to keep, so keep the ones that carry real links indefinitely.

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