Why are some links shown as lost when they are still active?
All SEO tools have a common problem: We have a hard time detecting lost links accurately. This means we will sometimes show a link as lost even though it actually still exists.
In this example, Morningscore tells me I lost this link, but when I go to the page, I can see with my own eyes, that it is still there:
In general you can trust your own observation more.
Why do SEO tools report false negatives?
Everyone seems to understand what a "false negative" is by now. Covid taught us that. The tests to detect if you had covid were unreliable. They provided a ton of false negatives. Billions of Dollars were poured into development of these tests. The smartest scientists in the world couldn't solve the accuracy.
The same is true for links in SEO. It is a really hard to get more accurate. In general you can expect SEO tools to be up to 80% accurate on the reports of lost links. Sometimes it can be lower than 50%. It depends on many things, like the countries you got links from. Each website is unique.
Is there a solution?
For now the only solution is to check these lost links yourself by following the links.
First go to the landing page of the lost link (see image above).
Right click anywhere on the landing page you arrived on. In the menu that appears find "view source" and click on it.
Now you should see some code like this - don't panic ;)
press CTRL + F keys (on Windows) to search this code for your domain - so in this example i type "Morningscore".
In this example, since I cannot find any results for my domain name "Morningscore", there is a 99% guarantee that the link is actually lost.
If you do find your domain in the search results with a link (example: https://morningscore.io/) then your link is not actually lost.
Morningscore has a plan
In the future we will be able to get a higher accuracy than other tools currently have. Stay tuned
In this example, Morningscore tells me I lost this link, but when I go to the page, I can see with my own eyes, that it is still there:
In general you can trust your own observation more.
Why do SEO tools report false negatives?
Everyone seems to understand what a "false negative" is by now. Covid taught us that. The tests to detect if you had covid were unreliable. They provided a ton of false negatives. Billions of Dollars were poured into development of these tests. The smartest scientists in the world couldn't solve the accuracy.
The same is true for links in SEO. It is a really hard to get more accurate. In general you can expect SEO tools to be up to 80% accurate on the reports of lost links. Sometimes it can be lower than 50%. It depends on many things, like the countries you got links from. Each website is unique.
Is there a solution?
For now the only solution is to check these lost links yourself by following the links.
First go to the landing page of the lost link (see image above).
Right click anywhere on the landing page you arrived on. In the menu that appears find "view source" and click on it.
Now you should see some code like this - don't panic ;)
press CTRL + F keys (on Windows) to search this code for your domain - so in this example i type "Morningscore".
In this example, since I cannot find any results for my domain name "Morningscore", there is a 99% guarantee that the link is actually lost.
If you do find your domain in the search results with a link (example: https://morningscore.io/) then your link is not actually lost.
Morningscore has a plan
In the future we will be able to get a higher accuracy than other tools currently have. Stay tuned
Updated on: 15/08/2023