Backlinks are incoming links to a website (blog or web page). The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page and is used by Google to determine the PageRank of a (blog or web page). The Incoming Links panel we used to track backlinks has been removed from the WordPress.com dashboard.
Incoming Links were being pulled from Google Blog Search to display URLs around the Internet linking to your blog. They disappeared form our dasboard display and for months now WordPress.com bloggers have been asking on the WordPress.com support forum: Incoming links – where are they? Staff have provided two updates.
On Google’s Blog Search API page http://code.google.com/apis/blogsearch/ it says:
“Important: The Google Blog Search API has been officially deprecated as of May 26, 2011. It will continue to work as per our deprecation policy, but the number of requests you may make per day may be limited.”
So I’ve suggested we remove it as a default setting in the Incoming Links panel on the main dashboard. I’m not sure yet if it will be replaced with something else, or possibly removed as something that shows up by default, or something else that I haven’t thought of yet. — designsimply
Happiness Engineer
Jul 27, 2011, 3:44 AMWe removed the Incoming Links panel. The Google Blog Search API we were using before is no longer supported by Google. There are a few alternatives. One is to look at referrers in your site stats instead. Another is to use Google Webmaster Tools where Google does still provide a “Links to your site” report in that service. — designsimply
Happiness Engineer
Jul 31, 2011, 2:25 PM
You can go to Technorati and see your links there. Note that blogroll links are not included. You can also use the seomoz Open Site Explorer.
Further reading: Why counting links is not so easy
Seomoz Open Site Explorer backlinks check
Alexa backlinks check
Google backlinks checker
Related posts found in this blog:
Blogging Basics: Becoming a Webmaster
Bing Webmaster Tools for SEO
Pingback: General upkeep | Laughin Jude
That open site explorer is really cool. You always find niifty tools. It said I had a rank of 3. At first I thought that was terrible but then when I read the explanation, Im happy about that 3.
Congrats! on the PR3. Good for you. I’m also glad you found this article and the tools in it to be helpful.
Valuable info, thanks for the great the insight not just on this post but on previous ones as well!
-Aimee
Thank you. I’m pleased to hear your positive feedback.
Hm! Should I be worried about this? I suppose things are just changing and evolving, eh?
p.s Thanks for the info
You’re welcome. I don’t thing this is anything to worry about. Backlinks are a reflection of popularity. Knowing which posts are popular and which aren’t is helpful. On one hand, knowing which posts others felt were of high enough authority to backlink too indicates which subjects were well received and we may want to continue blogging on them. The opposite is also true. One the other hand, posts that do not get much traffic and/or backlinks my reflect subjects our readers are not interested in so we may not wish to continue blogging on them.
Hi TiTi,
I too was wondering about this and was kind of worried, if google had somehow blacklisted my blog etc….but phew..its a glitch :)
I do hope it gets solved soon. It makes it difficult for us to know who is linking to us, and show some love back na…
Thanks so much for this info.
Lots of love,
Z~
If you have several backlinks to your blogs and posts, it is very hard to find that who has placed you in their blogroll. In Google Webmasters, I see that my blog is linked to 43000+ places on the web (wordpress.com the most) but after a hard search I found that maximum links are to the posts and only 3 or 4 people has placed me on their blogrolls.
A question:
I just claimed my blog on technorati. It has an authority of 92. What does it mean? Many sites have more/less authorities than me.
See this page for a description of what Technoarti authority and rank are based on.
http://technorati.com/what-is-technorati-authority/
I prefer using the seomoz open site explorer.
Thanks! I’ve been wondering about this, and whether it was only happening on my blog. It’s very helpful to know.
Hi Sandra,
It’s been such a long time since they were available and so many people have asked about them on the forum that I decided to spread the word. Hopefully, one of the SEO guru types will have some suggestions to make and comment.
Yahoo’s site explorer is also deprecated and likely to close soon – they’re recommending bing’s site tools – haven’t seen anything for counting backlinks in that dashboard.
Hey there,
Long time no connect. Thanks for the info on Yahoo’s open site explorer. I’ll remove the link from my post. I don’t use it. I have been using the seomoz open site explorer. I also use Google. What do you recommend?
haha, yeah – I just happened to be online at the right moment, and thinking about it lately.
seomoz’ open explorer will probably be my replacement – google is important to keep tabs on, but a little unreliable for bean counting – same goes for alexa (which seems to only count unique domains with incoming links).
I’m glad you were online at the right momnet because it’s good to hear from you. I’m not great at mathematics. My eyes glaze over and my mind fogs up when faced tith numbers. It seemed to me that seomoz has a good thing going so thanks for weighing in.
Like you point out Alexa says:
I did some screenshots on what I found on three sites and edited the post to include them. Check it out.
What are Bing’s site tools? Have you got a link? thx
See here > http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster