Why backlinks are worth checking constantly
A backlink is a link to your site from someone else's page, called the donor page. Such links affect how Google assesses your site's authority. But they are not eternal: the site owner can remove the link or change it to nofollow, the donor page can disappear with a 404 error, fall under noindex or simply drop out of the Google index. If you bought a link or arranged a guest post and it stopped working, the money is spent with no effect — and without a check you will not know about it.
What the Backlink Index Checker verifies
- Whether the link is on the donor page — to the address you specified (taking into account www, the trailing slash and index.html).
- Link type — dofollow, nofollow, sponsored or ugc, as well as nofollow at the level of the whole page.
- Anchor — the link text (or the image alt), and how many links to your page the donor has.
- Whether the donor page is in the Google index — and whether it is blocked from indexing.
- Technical state of the donor — response code, noindex in meta or X-Robots-Tag, robots.txt, canonical to another address, redirect.
- History — when the link was first found, when it was last seen and when a check noticed it had disappeared (accurate to the check frequency).
Indexing of your own pages is checked separately by a website indexing check.
What can go wrong with a link
If the donor has dropped out of Google, see why a page dropped out of the index.
How it works
History helps to spot the moment a link disappeared
One check answers the question “right now”. Regular checks keep the link presence history: you see when it was first found, how long it stayed in place and at which check it was no longer found, so you can contact the site owner in time or demand a replacement.
Limitations worth knowing about
- The service does not look for who links to you: it tracks the links you added yourself. Finding new backlinks requires a separate large link database.
- Links added by JavaScript after the page loads are not visible in the HTML, so they will be shown as “missing”.
- If the donor site blocks bots (403/429 responses, Cloudflare), the check will fail — tokens are not charged in that case.
- The “indexed” status is determined from Google search data, as in our indexing check. A link being in place and the donor being indexed does not guarantee that Google will count it.
For a long list of donors, a bulk index checker is convenient.
Frequently asked questions
What is a backlink and why check that it is present?
A backlink is a link to your site from another page. It can disappear or stop working without any notification, so a regular check shows the moment it happened.
How do I check that a link is still on the page?
Manually — open the donor page and find the link in the code. StayIndexed does it automatically and repeats the check on a schedule, keeping the history.
What do dofollow, nofollow, sponsored and ugc mean?
Dofollow is a regular link that Google may count. Nofollow, sponsored (paid) and ugc (user-generated content) are rel attributes that tell Google not to treat the link as an endorsement; value is usually not passed through them.
Why does it matter that the donor page is in the Google index?
If Google does not index a page, it most likely does not count the link from it either. That is why we show the donor's indexing next to the link's presence.
Can I find out who links to me?
No, the service only tracks the links you added: bought ones, placed in guest posts or obtained by agreement.
How much does a backlink check cost?
3 tokens per check. Tokens are charged only for a successful check. 30 tokens are credited at sign-up — that is 10 checks.