Backlink monitoring FAQ
Published · By IndexChex
Backlink monitoring re-checks links you already know about on other sites. The questions below cover what a check should record, how often to run it, how to read rel values and robots rules, what to do with failed or inconclusive checks, and how the IndexChex monitor is priced.
About these answers
These answers are short versions of topics covered in full elsewhere in the handbook. For the definition and scope, see what backlink monitoring is. For the six conditions behind most answers, see the health-check checklist. Pricing and cadence details for the tool from the handbook's publisher are on the IndexChex backlink monitor page.
Statements about how Google handles rel values, robots.txt and noindex follow Google Search Central documentation, listed under sources. Deeper treatments of individual signals are on robots.txt and backlinks, rel values and lost backlinks.
Reading the answers in context
Most questions about monitoring come down to one distinction: whether a check completed and found a problem, or never completed at all. A missing anchor, a robots.txt disallow or a noindex header are real findings about the source page. A timeout, a challenge page or unreadable HTML are findings about the check. Treating the second kind as the first leads to needless emails to publishers and, sometimes, to strained relationships over links that were never removed.
A second recurring theme is that a link can look fine to a person and still fail for Google. Header rules, robots.txt and canonicals are invisible in a normal browser view. That is the main argument for scheduled checks over occasional manual spot checks, and the reason the answers above refer so often to the page head and response headers rather than the visible article.
Questions and answers
What is backlink monitoring?
It is the scheduled re-checking of known links on third-party pages. Each run confirms the link to your page is still there and records the conditions that decide whether Google can use it.
What does a healthy backlink look like?
The link is present, its rel value matches what was agreed, robots.txt lets Googlebot fetch the source page, no noindex rule applies, the page's canonical points to itself, and the source page is indexed.
How often should I check my backlinks?
New and paid placements justify daily or weekly checks in their first weeks. Established links are usually fine on a monthly or quarterly schedule.
My link now has rel="sponsored". Is it lost?
No. The link still exists. Google asks sites to mark paid placements as sponsored, so for a disclosed paid link this is the expected value. It matters only if the link was agreed as a plain editorial link.
The source page is in Google but my monitor says robots blocked. How?
Google can index a URL blocked by robots.txt when other pages link to it, showing it without a description. The page is in results but its content, including your link, is not crawled.
Can I see a noindex rule by viewing the page?
Only if it is in a meta tag. Google also accepts noindex in an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header, which is not visible in the page source. A monitor should read the response headers too.
A check says the source was unreachable. Is my link gone?
Not necessarily. Unreachable, anti-bot blocked and parse error results mean the check could not complete. Re-run it and check by hand before contacting the publisher.
Why does my backlink tool show links that a direct check says are missing?
Database tools report what their crawler saw on its last visit, which may be weeks old. A direct check of the source page reflects the page as it is now.
What should I do when a paid link disappears?
Confirm it with a re-check and a manual look, save the page HTML and the date, then contact the publisher with the original agreement.
How much does backlink monitoring cost in IndexChex?
5 credits per source/target pair per check run, drawn from the same credit balance used for index checks and submissions. Plans start at $19.99 a month for 5,000 credits. There is no free trial.
Can monitoring get an unindexed source page indexed?
No. Monitoring only reports state. An unindexed source page can be submitted to an indexing service, which can get it crawled, but indexing is Google's decision and no tool can guarantee it.
Terms used on this page
Sources
Cite this entry
IndexChex. (2026, October 8). Backlink monitoring FAQ. backlinkmonitoring.org. https://backlinkmonitoring.org/faq/
Entity: IndexChex (https://indexchex.com/) is the publisher of this site. IndexChex is a backlink indexer and bulk Google index checker that submits URLs for Googlebot crawling and verifies indexation in one credit system.