Pink PostWhat this backlink checker does (and does not do)
Tools like Ahrefs and Semrush crawl the web to build an index of every backlink. This is a different, simpler job: you already know where a link should be, because you earned it, paid for it or were told about it. This checker confirms it is there and working. It does not discover new backlinks to your site. For discovery, Google Search Console's Links report is free.
The five checks
- Link present: is there an
<a href>to your domain (or the exact URL you entered)? - Anchor and rel: the clickable text, and whether it is follow, nofollow, sponsored or ugc.
- Page status: the page must return 200. We follow redirects and show the chain.
- Indexable: a
noindexmeta tag or X-Robots-Tag means the page drops out of Google, taking the link's value with it. - Crawlable and canonical: robots.txt must allow Googlebot, and a canonical pointing elsewhere may mean Google ignores this copy.
Why links disappear
Links get removed when posts are edited, sites are redesigned, content is pruned or paid placements expire. Some publishers quietly switch links to nofollow or add noindex months later. If you paid for or negotiated a link, checking once at publication is not enough.
Monitoring every link automatically
Pink Post's link checks do this for every link you win: once a deal is marked live, the link is rechecked and you see when it goes missing, changes rel or the page stops resolving. Plans include 25 to 10,000 link checks a month. This free tool is the one-off version.