BACKLINK PLACEMENT GUIDE

Check what a backlink placement contains

To check a backlink, inspect the published source page for a link to your URL, read its anchor and rel values, and check where both URLs resolve. The free backlink placement checker performs those checks on server-delivered HTML. This guide explains how to interpret them.

Use these checks when receiving a guest post, an editorial mention or a link exchange. Finding a link confirms an observed placement at that moment. It does not establish indexing, permanence, editorial quality, ranking credit or search-engine visibility.

Source page versus backlink URL

The source page is the publisher's page that should contain the link. The backlink URL is the destination the link should point to, usually a page on your site. Enter both as public HTTPS URLs. Checking your own destination page as the source searches the wrong page for the placement.

Published page URL: https://publisher.example/articles/tools — the article containing the mention.
Backlink URL: https://recipient.example/resources — the page readers should reach.

Use the exact article URL the publisher supplied. A link on a homepage, preview or staging page does not prove that the agreed article contains it. Check the live page without a publisher login as well.

Read the href, anchor text and rel tokens

<a href="https://recipient.example/resources"
   rel="nofollow sponsored">Resource library</a>

In this example, href names the destination, "Resource library" is the anchor text, and nofollow and sponsored are separate rel tokens. A mention of your brand in plain text is not the same as an anchor with an href.

The checker resolves relative hrefs using the final source-page URL and its first base href, when valid. It compares the resolved href with your requested backlink URL and the redirect URLs observed while fetching that destination. Fragments such as #pricing are ignored for matching; different query strings can still produce different URLs.

Read every matching link if there is more than one. The article's contextual mention and a footer link can have different anchors or rel values. The checker's anchor text comes from HTML text content; an image-only link can have no text here even when the image has an alt description. Inspect the rendered page for the reader's actual experience.

HTML link semantics · checked 27 Sep 2026: MDN anchor element

Check whether the link includes nofollow

The checker recognizes nofollow among space-separated rel tokens, regardless of case. noopener and noreferrer have other purposes and do not substitute for nofollow. Absence of nofollow does not prove ranking credit. Do nofollow links help SEO? explains what Google documents about nofollow links and what they can still do.

Google recommends sponsored for paid placements and accepts nofollow for that purpose. Use the attributes appropriate to the relationship and your agreement. LinkBunny separately requires nofollow for every marketplace placement, including when other tokens are present.

Link qualification · checked 27 Sep 2026: Google outbound-link guidance · LinkBunny Skill

Check redirects on both sides

A source-page redirect changes which page the checker inspects. A backlink-URL redirect changes where a reader may arrive. Read each URL's HTTP status, redirect chain and final URL separately. A successful destination response does not prove that the source page contains a link.

If https://recipient.example/old redirects to https://recipient.example/new, the checker can match links to either observed URL. That match does not make the literal href identical to the final URL. Compare both with the agreed destination, especially when tracking URLs or another domain appears.

The checker fetches the source with GET and normally checks the destination with HEAD, falling back to GET when HEAD is unsupported. Blocking, timeouts or different server responses can prevent a complete check. A fetch error is not proof that ordinary readers cannot visit the page.

HTTP redirects · checked 27 Sep 2026: MDN redirections

A declared canonical is a preference

<link rel="canonical"
      href="https://publisher.example/articles/original">

A source page can declare another URL as its preferred canonical. The example asks search engines to treat the original article URL as the representative version. The declaration does not redirect the reader, remove the link or establish which canonical Google chose.

The checker shows the first canonical declaration found in the source HTML and flags a resolved URL that differs from the final source URL. Review the original and declared pages if the difference is unexpected. The checker does not inspect HTTP-header canonicals, destination-page canonicals or Google's selected canonical. No declaration found here means only that this HTML check found none.

Canonical declarations and selection · checked 27 Sep 2026: Google canonical guidance

A missing match needs a closer look

The checker reads HTML returned by the server. It does not run page JavaScript. A link inserted after JavaScript runs can appear in your browser and be absent from the fetched HTML. A missing match therefore does not, by itself, prove the publisher removed the link.

Check that both input URLs are correct, the source fetch succeeded and the page is public. Open the article in a browser and inspect the anchor's href. Look for a changed destination, a redirect wrapper, a link added by JavaScript or a page that varies by login or region. Ask the publisher to clarify any mismatch before treating the placement as complete.

Google documents links as crawlable anchors with hrefs and can process links inserted by JavaScript. This checker does not reproduce Google's rendering or crawling. Neither a found match nor a missing one settles whether a search engine can see or has indexed it.

Crawlable links and JavaScript · checked 27 Sep 2026: Google link best practices

When a placement is ready to report

Before accepting a placement, confirm the live article, intended destination, readable context, actual anchor and agreed rel values. Resolve unexpected redirects or canonical declarations with the publisher. Save the page URL, the time of the check and the reported link details; a later page change can invalidate today's observation.

For a LinkBunny request, also confirm that the live page stays within the exact inventory origin and path prefix, the placement fits the context and the link includes nofollow. Follow the agent reporting workflow or Codex walkthrough to obtain approval and report the actual page and anchor. Running the free checker does not report an assignment or independently certify a LinkBunny self-report.

Apply these checks to the publisher's page with the backlink placement checker using the published page and destination URLs. Compare the matching anchors and rel values with the agreed placement before accepting it.

Recheck an exchanged link later

To check that an exchanged backlink is still present, run the backlink placement checker again with the same source page and backlink URL you used the first time. Then compare the new report with the result you saved when you accepted the placement.

For example, LinkBunny's launch directories article links to Klibon. Without its class and target attributes, the link is:

<a href="https://klibon.com/"
   rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Klibon</a>

A recheck of that pair uses https://getlinkbunny.com/articles/launch-directories as the source page and https://klibon.com/ as the backlink URL. Compare each matching link's resolved href, HTML href, anchor text and rel tokens, including whether nofollow is still present. Also compare the source page's final URL, redirects and declared canonical, and the backlink URL's final URL.

Matching link found: The server HTML still links to your URL or a redirect URL observed for it. Raise a changed anchor, destination or rel value with the publisher. In the MCP tool, this outcome is found.
No matching link visible: The source page was fetched, and its HTML had no link to your URL. Before treating the link as removed, work through the missing-match checks above. In the MCP tool, this outcome is not_found.
Source page not fetched or not successful: The checker could not inspect the page. A timeout, blocked request or HTTP error is not proof the publisher removed the link. Open the page in a browser and try again later. In the MCP tool, this outcome is indeterminate.

If you changed your own backlink URL since the first check, read its redirects first. The checker matches links to the redirect URLs it observes now, not the ones from the first check.

Backlink index tools can report a link as lost while a live check still finds it, and the reverse. Ahrefs marks a link lost based on its most recent recrawl, including when the linking page redirected, returned an error, became noindex or non-canonical, or was dropped from its index, even though the link may still be on the page. Search Console's Links report shows a sample of links known to Google, not every link. The checker fetches the page at the moment you run it.

Lost links in index tools · checked 17 Oct 2026: Ahrefs link lost reasons · Search Console Links report

Each recheck is one observation, like the first check. LinkBunny does not schedule rechecks, monitor the page or send alerts for the free checker. Set your own reminder, or ask your coding agent to run inspect_placement again with the same two URLs.