BACKLINKS
Backlink monitoring for lost and paid links
Badgerfly's Backlink Monitor is a backlink monitoring tool for agencies and SEO teams. Each check of a site's links is compared with the one before to find new and lost links, and the links you paid for are verified every time. If a paid link is lost, you get an alert.
New and lost, check to check
Backlink monitoring is a comparison. One check is a reading of the site's links; the next is compared with it, and the difference is the news: links that appeared and links that disappeared. Lost backlinks are listed so you can see which site dropped the link and decide whether it is worth asking for it back.
Each check also reports the totals: active links, lost links, referring domains (how many different sites link to the project) and how many links are followed.
Links you paid for, verified every check
A sponsorship, a directory listing you pay for, a placed article: when money changes hands, you want to know the link is still there. Add each paid link by hand, and every check confirms three things:
| Check | What it confirms |
|---|---|
| Still on the page | The link has not been removed or the page taken down. |
| Still pointing at the right address | The link goes where it should, not to an old or wrong page. |
| Still followed | The link still passes authority. |
Each paid link shows when it was last verified. A paid link that is lost raises an alert, so you can take it up with the site that placed it.
What a check shows
Results export to CSV.
- Follow: how many active links are dofollow and how many are nofollow
- Links per referring site: how many sites link once, two to five times, or six times or more, with a click through to the sites in each band
- By referring site or by anchor text: two views of the same links, with filters for dofollow only, lost and paid
On a schedule, or now
The monitor runs on a schedule you set, and its setup shows the schedule and the last check's totals. Need an answer today? Check now runs a check straight away.
Alerts across every project
Once a day, Alerts looks at the data every module has already collected and raises an alert for new and lost links alongside ranking moves, site health changes and new reviews. An agency hears about a lost link across all its projects in one place, before the business it works for notices.
A link monitoring tool that pairs with the audit
Backlink Monitor watches; Backlink Audit judges. When the monitor shows a burst of new links from sites you do not recognise, run a Backlink Audit to score them for risk, decide keep, monitor or disavow, and build the disavow file. When it shows a lost link worth replacing, Backlink Gap and Link Prospector find new sites to ask.
A crawler that identifies itself
Paid links are verified by BadgerflyBot, Badgerfly's crawler, reading the page. It names itself in its user agent and follows robots.txt, so a site owner can see exactly what visited. The BadgerflyBot page explains it.
What it costs
Each check uses tokens, whether scheduled or run with Check now, and reopening an earlier check costs nothing. How tokens work
Questions
What is backlink monitoring?
Checking a site's links on a schedule and comparing each check with the last, so you know which links are new and which were lost.
How do I find lost backlinks?
Every check lists the links that disappeared since the one before, with the site that dropped them. Filter the result to lost links to see only those.
What happens when a paid link disappears?
Backlink Monitor raises an alert. Paid links are also checked for the right address and for still being followed, and each shows when it was last verified.
How often does it check?
On the schedule you set for the monitor, or straight away with Check now.
PRIVATE BETA
Try Badgerfly on real work
Badgerfly is built and runs end to end, and it is in a private beta for agencies, freelancers and in-house SEO teams. Beta accounts are free, with a monthly allowance for real audits, research and tracking. All we ask is honest feedback.