Backlink monitoring

Expansel re-reads the pages that are supposed to point to you on a schedule, and alerts you if the link has gone or has turned nofollow.

What is checked Link presence on the source page, anchor text, rel attribute, page actually linked, HTTP status of the source.
When At your plan's pace, on every link you have declared.
What triggers an alert The link is gone, the source page is in error, or the link switched to nofollow while you require dofollow.
Setup None. Your pages are read from the outside, the way a visitor reads them.
Tracked backlinks 3 / 50
blog-jardinage-exemple.fr/meilleurs-outils Link present

Anchor text : guide des outils de jardin rel attribute : dofollow

annuaire-exemple.fr/fiche/1204 Problem

Anchor text : boutique-exemple.fr rel attribute : nofollow

The link is still there, but it turned nofollow: it no longer passes anything.

magazine-exemple.com/dossier-jardin Problem

The link is gone from the source page.

Sample data

The most expensive work in SEO evaporates quietly

A link earned after three months of back-and-forth vanishes when the partner redesigns their site. Nobody tells you: not the partner, who never thought of it, and not the search engine, which simply adjusts your position. You find out months later, wondering why traffic dropped.

What gets checked

The link is still there

The source page is fetched and parsed. The link is matched by domain: whether it points at your homepage or a specific article, it counts.

The anchor is recorded at every pass

The link text is recorded and shown on its record at every check. A partner who replaces your anchor with “click here” costs you most of its value: the record shows the current anchor, and comparing it is up to you. That change does not raise an alert yet.

The link is still dofollow

The rel attribute is captured. A link switched to nofollow stays visible to a reader but stops passing value. That's an incident, and it is treated as one.

What you get

  • An email alert as soon as a link disappears or turns nofollow.
  • For each link: the source page, the page actually linked, the anchor found and the rel attribute.
  • A list you can filter by site, status and link type, still usable with several thousand entries.
  • The detail of the last check on every record, including the source page HTTP status.
alertes@expansel.com 19:00

Alert: boutique-exemple.fr is not responding

The latest check on boutique-exemple.fr did not pass.

Address :
https://boutique-exemple.fr/
Detail :
HTTP 503
Checked at :
19/09/2026 19:00

You will get a second email as soon as it is back to normal: nothing to do on your side for that.

Recovered: boutique-exemple.fr is responding again

boutique-exemple.fr is responding normally again. The incident is closed.

Sample data

What it does not do

  • We do not discover new backlinks: you declare the links to follow. Automatic discovery will come with the crawl engine.
  • We assign no authority score to the source domain. That kind of rating is a proprietary estimate, not a measurement: we would rather not invent one.
  • We neither create nor negotiate links. The tool observes; it does not do outreach.

The numbers, per plan

FreeProBusinessEntreprise
Tracked backlinks 5010005000050000 and up
Backlink frequency Weekly checksDaily checksChecks twice a dayChecks twice a day

All three are included in every plan. What changes is the volume and how often the checks run.

Frequently asked questions

How do you know the link really points to me?

Matching is done on the domain, ignoring the www prefix and the protocol. A link to any page of your site counts, and the exact address that was found is shown to you.

What happens if the source page is temporarily unreachable?

It is reported as an incident, with the HTTP status obtained or the nature of the failure. That way you can tell a genuinely removed link from a partner's server having a bad day.

Can I pause monitoring on a link without deleting it?

Yes. Turning monitoring off stops the checks and the alerts, but keeps the record, its settings and its full history. One click brings it back.

Going further

Why backlinks disappear (and how to catch it) Backlinks vanish, turn nofollow or point to a dead page without warning. Why it happens, and how to spot it before it costs you rankings. Dofollow vs nofollow: what actually changes A nofollow link stays visible to readers but stops passing authority. What the attribute really does, when it is legitimate, and why a switch matters. What makes a backlink good (and how to tell) Forget the third-party scores for a moment. A good backlink is one a real person could plausibly click. Here is how to judge one in two minutes. Anchor text: what it tells Google about you The words inside a link describe what is on the other side. Too vague and it says nothing; too optimised and it says you wrote it yourself. Should you disavow a toxic backlink? Usually not. The disavow file solves one narrow problem, and using it out of anxiety does more harm than the links it targets. When it is justified. How long does a backlink actually last? There is no universal figure, and anyone quoting one is guessing. But links do not die at random: they die at a handful of predictable moments. Tracking backlinks in a spreadsheet: how far it goes A spreadsheet is the right place to start, and it stays useful longer than people admit. It just cannot answer the one question that matters. Keeping your backlinks through a website redesign A redesign does not remove your backlinks. It breaks what they point at, which is worse, because the other site still thinks it is linking to you.

Same family: SEO

This is the only feature in this family for now.

Try it on your own sites

Free for one site and fifty links. No credit card.

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