Frequently asked questions

Mostly for ordinary reasons on the publisher's side: the post was refreshed and the link cut, the page was deleted or moved without a redirect, the site was redesigned and the author bio with your link vanished, or the domain expired. With paid placements there is also the seller who removes or nofollows links a few months after delivery. In every case you only find out if something is watching the page.

Open the exact page where the link should be and search the source for your domain. To do it for hundreds of pages every day, add them here: we open each page, find the link to your site and record what we see. You can also run a single check with the free backlink checker, no account needed.

Look at the link's rel attribute. If it contains nofollow, sponsored or ugc, the link no longer passes ranking signals the normal way. We show the attribute for every link and alert you the day it changes.

Check three things: whether the link is in the raw HTML or only appears after JavaScript runs, whether the rel attribute changed, and whether the page redirects somewhere else. Our checks record all of it, and the evidence file shows exactly what the page returned and when.

Daily. Most removals happen one to three months after delivery, and the sooner you notice, the easier it is to get the link restored or replaced while the vendor's guarantee still applies. Every plan here checks every link once a day.

• Live: the link is on the page and matches what you expect.
• Changed: the link is there, but the anchor text differs, it became nofollow, sponsored or ugc while you need dofollow, or the page went noindex.
• Lost: the page loads fine, but the link to your site is gone.
• Page gone: the page returns 404 or 410, is parked or for sale, shows a hosting placeholder, or redirects to another domain. The reason says where.
• Can't verify: we could not look. The site blocked us, timed out, or builds its content with JavaScript. This is not a lost link.

Index Watch adds a second column. Waiting means Google has not indexed the page yet. Indexed shows the date it first appeared. Not indexed after 30 days means it is time to talk to the seller. Dropped means the page was indexed and is now gone from Google, confirmed on a second check.

Large publishers often refuse automated visitors with a 403 or a captcha. Reporting a lost link because a site blocked us would be a false alarm, and false alarms are how teams learn to ignore alerts. One blocked day changes nothing. After three unverifiable checks in a row we tell you.

If the HTML has no links and rendering is available, we render the page in a headless browser and look again. Otherwise the link shows as "can't verify".

When a link changes status (for example from live to lost), not on every daily check. The first check of a new link is silent. Alerts go to the channels you set up under Notifications: email, a Telegram chat or group, Slack, Discord or a webhook, each with its own event and project filters and optional quiet hours. Index Watch sends its own alerts: when a page is still not indexed after 14 and 30 days, and when an indexed page drops out of Google.

Open Notifications, then Connect Telegram, press the button, then open a private chat with our bot or add it to a group. The chat is linked to your account automatically.

Yes, on Starter and above. Index Watch checks whether the page carrying your link is actually in Google's index. A link on a page Google has not indexed passes nothing. We store the date the page first appears in Google. If the page drops out of the index we confirm it on a second check and alert you with both dates.

After 30 days without indexing you get an alert and a ready-to-send message to the seller with our check log attached. Most sellers will resubmit the page or offer a replacement once they see the dates.

Google's results are not perfectly stable, and a single "not found" would mean false alarms. We only report a drop after a second check agrees.

Yes. Under Reports you create a read-only page for a project, with your own brand name, and revoke it any time. Clients also get a weekly and a monthly summary if you want.

Open the link in your dashboard: you get dated evidence of every check and a ready-to-send message asking the publisher to restore the link. Nothing is sent automatically. You edit and send it yourself. The same applies when the page was never indexed or dropped out of Google: the message template and the evidence file cover that case too.

Paste lines in the form linking page; your page; anchor, upload a CSV (exports from Ahrefs and Semrush work as they are), or import a Google Sheet shared by link and re-sync it later to pull in new rows.

Plans differ by the number of backlinks, domains and users, and Index Watch starts at Starter. Everything else is on every plan. See Pricing. "Check now" has a monthly allowance because every manual check is a real request to someone's website.

Enter it under Your plan, then Have a promo code?. A code gives you a paid plan for free until the date the promotion ends.

Open a ticket from Support in your dashboard, or write to [email protected].