Lost Backlinks: Why They Disappear and How to Recover Them

This guide explains why lost backlinks happen, how to find them with free and paid tools, which ones deserve your time, and the exact recovery steps I use when a client’s important link disappears.

Why are my backlinks decreasing?

Your backlinks are decreasing because pages on other sites change constantly: posts get deleted, sites expire, editors remove outbound links, and your own URL changes can break links that still exist. Some loss every month is completely normal for any site.

These are the seven causes I see most often when auditing client profiles:

• Linking page deleted. The host removed or unpublished the post, so it now returns a 404.
• Link removed in an edit. An editor updated the article and dropped or replaced your link.
• Your URL changed. You moved or renamed a page without a redirect, so the link now hits a 404 on your site.
• Domain expired or site closed. Common with small blogs and some link selling sites.
• Site migration on the host side. The publisher changed CMS or structure and old posts vanished.
• Attribute changed. The link still exists but now carries nofollow or sponsored. Some tools report this as lost.
• Tool recrawl noise. A backlink tool failed to reach the page during its crawl and flagged it as lost by mistake.

That last cause matters. Before chasing anyone, open the linking page yourself and check the source. A surprising share of “lost” links in third party tools are still live.

How do you find lost backlinks?

You find lost backlinks by comparing link data over time, either with a third party backlink tool’s lost links report or by saving regular exports of Search Console’s Links report and comparing them. Google’s own report does not have a “lost” view, so comparison is the method.

Google’s Links report help page says the report is a sample and includes links Google has discovered over time, some of which may have been removed since. Export the linking sites table monthly, keep the files, and compare them in a spreadsheet to see which domains dropped off.

1. Export “Top linking sites” and “Top linked pages” from Search Console each month.
2. Pull the lost links report from one backlink tool for the same period.
3. Remove duplicates and anything from obvious spam domains.
4. Open every remaining linking URL and confirm the link is really gone.
5. Note the cause: page deleted, link removed, your URL broken, or attribute changed.

Also check your own side. Look for pages on your site that return 404 but still have external links pointing to them. My guide to Search Console indexing errors explains how to find these in the Pages report.

How do I recover lost backlinks?

You recover lost backlinks by first fixing anything on your own site that broke the link, then contacting site owners with a short, specific request for links that were removed or pages that were deleted. Your own fixes are fast and fully in your control.

If the link points to a URL you changed, add a 301 redirect to the most relevant live page. Google’s site move documentation states that 301 and other permanent redirects do not cause a loss in PageRank, and it recommends keeping redirects for as long as possible, generally at least one year. The same guidance suggests contacting sites that link to your old URLs and asking them to update the links, prioritizing by how much traffic each link sends.

For links removed by the publisher, the outreach email should:

• Name the exact page and the link that was there.
• Offer a reason to restore it, such as an updated resource or a fixed URL.
• Make the change easy: give the exact anchor and URL to paste.
• Stay friendly. Editors owe you nothing for an editorial link.

A short template I adapt for each case: “Hi, I noticed your article on [topic] used to link to our [resource]. We have since updated it with [new detail], and the current URL is [URL]. If it still fits, readers may find it useful. Thanks either way.” Short, specific and easy to act on gets far more replies than a long pitch.

Follow up once after about a week if there is no reply, then move on. Chasing the same editor repeatedly rarely works and can close the door on future mentions.

For paid placements with an agreed duration, refer to the agreement and ask the seller to restore or replace the link. This is one reason I log every placement with its date, URL and anchor.

Which lost backlinks are worth recovering?

Lost backlinks worth recovering are the ones from relevant, trusted sites that sent traffic or pointed to important pages; links from spammy or irrelevant sites are usually not worth the effort. Use this table to decide quickly.

Does losing backlinks affect rankings?

Losing backlinks can affect rankings when the lost links were relevant, trusted and pointing at pages that depended on them, but losing a handful of low value links usually changes nothing visible. The impact depends on what was lost, not how many.

A drop that coincides with losing one strong editorial link from a major site in your niche deserves attention. A tool alert about 200 lost links from scraper sites does not. Look at which pages lost links and whether those exact pages lost traffic in Search Console.

What does a lost backlink recovery look like?

How can you prevent losing backlinks?

You prevent most lost backlinks by never changing URLs without redirects, keeping a log of every link you build, and choosing host sites that are likely to stay online. Prevention takes far less time than recovery.

Before any redesign, export your top linked pages and map each one to its new URL. My website redesign service includes this redirect mapping as standard, and the page with redirect guide explains how those redirects appear in Search Console afterwards. When buying or earning links, favour stable sites with real audiences over sites that exist mainly to sell posts. And if you want placements that are monitored and replaced when they disappear, my link building service reports every live URL and checks them over time.

Frequently asked questions