Lost Link Tracker: Automatically Monitor Your Valuable Backlinks

The Lost Link Tracker is a powerful tool for webmasters, SEO professionals, and digital marketers who invest in building backlinks to their websites. This tool automatically monitors your valuable backlinks to ensure they remain active and unchanged, alerting you when issues arise.

With the Lost Link Tracker, you can:

  • Monitor if your backlinks still exist on the referring pages
  • Detect when anchor text has been changed
  • Get alerted when linking pages become inaccessible
  • Receive email notifications for any changes
  • Automate checks to run every 24 hours

This step-by-step guide will walk you through setting up and using the Lost Link Tracker to protect your link-building investments.

Getting Started

Step 1: Make a Copy of the Template

  1. Open the Lost Link Tracker sheet
  2. Click on “File” → “Make a copy” to create your own version
  3. Give your copy a name (e.g., “My Lost Link Tracker”)

Step 2: Authorize the Script

  1. In your copy of the spreadsheet, click on the “Link Tracker” menu at the top
  2. Select “Check Links Now” from the dropdown
  3. A permissions dialog will appear. Click “Continue”
  4. Choose your Google account
  5. You’ll see a warning that “Google hasn’t verified this app.” Click “Advanced” and then “Go to Lost Link Tracker (unsafe)”
  6. Click “Allow” to grant the necessary permissions

Using the Lost Link Tracker

Adding Your Links to Track

  1. In your Google Sheet, replace the example data with your own backlinks:
    • Column A: The full URL of the page containing your link (e.g., https://example.com/blog-post)
    • Column B: The exact anchor text of your link (e.g., affordable SEO services)
    • Column C: The full URL that your link points to (e.g., https://yoursite.com/services)
  2. Add as many rows as needed, with one backlink per row

Running Manual Checks

  1. After adding your links, click on Link Tracker → Check Links Now
  2. The script will scan all the linking pages and update columns D and E with the results
  3. Column D will show the timestamp of when the check was performed
  4. Column E will show one of the following statuses:
    • Yes: The link exists with the expected anchor text
    • Yes (Anchor Changed: ‘New Anchor Text’): The link exists but with different anchor text
    • No: The link does not exist on the page
    • Error: [message]: The page couldn’t be accessed (with specific error details)

Setting Up Automatic Daily Checks

  1. Click on Link Tracker → Setup Daily Trigger
  2. You should see a toast notification saying “Daily link check scheduled successfully!”
  3. The script will now automatically check your links every 24 hours
  4. You’ll receive email alerts only when a link’s status changes

Removing Automatic Checks

If you want to stop the automatic daily checks:

  1. Click on Link Tracker → Remove Daily Trigger
  2. You should see a toast notification saying “Daily trigger removed”

Understanding the Email Alerts

The Lost Link Tracker sends email alerts only when there’s a change in the status of your links. The email will include details about:

  1. LINK REMOVED: When a link that previously existed is no longer found
  2. LINK RESTORED: When a link that was previously missing is now found
  3. ANCHOR TEXT CHANGED: When a link exists but its anchor text has been modified
  4. ANCHOR TEXT RESTORED: When anchor text returns to your expected text
  5. PAGE ERROR: When a linking page becomes inaccessible (e.g., returns 404, 500 error)

Each alert includes:

  • The URL of the linking page
  • Your target URL
  • The expected anchor text
  • The current status with specific details about the change

Tips for Effective Link Tracking

  1. Use Complete URLs: Always include the full URL with https:// or http://
  2. Be Exact with Anchor Text: Enter the anchor text exactly as it appears on the linking page
  3. Check Regularly: While automatic checks run daily, you may want to run manual checks after important updates
  4. Act Quickly: When you receive an alert, contact the website owner promptly to resolve issues

Troubleshooting

Script Not Working

If the script doesn’t work as expected:

  1. Make sure all URLs include the protocol (https:// or http://)
  2. Verify you’ve granted all necessary permissions
  3. Try running a manual check to ensure everything is set up correctly

False Positives/Negatives

If the script incorrectly reports link status:

  1. Ensure the linking page doesn’t use JavaScript to load content (the script can’t detect dynamically loaded content)
  2. Check if the anchor text exactly matches what’s on the page (including capitalization)
  3. Verify that the target URL exactly matches the href attribute in the link

Email Alerts Not Arriving

If you’re not receiving email alerts:

  1. Check your spam folder
  2. Verify that you’re logged into Google with the correct account
  3. Ensure you’ve granted the script permission to send emails

Conclusion

The Lost Link Tracker is an invaluable tool for maintaining the health of your backlink profile. By monitoring your backlinks regularly, you can quickly identify and resolve issues, protecting your SEO investments and maintaining your search rankings.

Start using the Lost Link Tracker today to ensure your backlinks remain intact and continue driving value to your website.

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