A backlink index re-check answers one question: is the page that carries your link still live, still open to Google and still in Google's index? Most link buyers ask it once, when the seller sends the report, and never again. The numbers below show why that single check is not enough.
What a year does to a batch of links
SpeedyIndex bought 15,389 backlinks on Fiverr and Kwork for its own projects: profiles, Web 2.0 pages, forum and comment links, articles and PBN links. Every URL was crawled as Googlebot Smartphone on August 21, 2026, and Google's index was checked on October 29, 2026. The full method is in a re-check of 15,389 bought backlinks a year later.
Age matters. DNS failures were 2.3% for links aged 6–12 months and 18.5% for links older than a year. A batch that looks healthy at month two can lose a fifth of its donors to expired domains by month thirteen, and nobody sends a report about that.
Check 1 at delivery: is the page there and open?
Do this within a day or two of receiving the report, while the seller can still fix problems:
- Status code. The link page should return HTTP 200 without a redirect. A 301 to the homepage is not the page you paid for.
- Indexing directives. Look for
noindexin meta robots and in theX-Robots-Tagresponse header. Google's documentation on blocking indexing with noindex covers both forms. - robots.txt for that path. A Disallow on
/u/or/profile/keeps Google from fetching the page at all, so a noindex on it is never even read. - Canonical. A canonical pointing to another URL tells Google which version to index, and it usually isn't yours.
- Your link in the HTML. The anchor should be in the page source, not injected later or hidden behind a login.
In the same audit, 457 page types were blocked from indexing on 443 sites, and on 266 of those sites the homepage was open. Profiles and shared-file pages were often closed while the main site looked perfectly fine.
Check 2 at 3 months: did Google index it?
By now Google has had time to discover and process the page. Check each link URL itself, not the donor domain. A page that is live and open but still not indexed after three months is unlikely to start passing value on its own. In the audit, even the cleanest group, live pages with no blocking signal, reached only 8.6% indexation (277 of 3,231).
For a list of more than a handful of URLs, a manual site: search is slow and unreliable. A bulk Google index check for your link list gives one status per URL that you can sort and keep.
Check 3 at 6 months: what broke since?
Repeat the delivery checks and compare with your earlier results. Typical changes at this stage:
- the donor page now redirects (11.9% of URLs in the audit redirected elsewhere);
- a noindex or robots rule appeared after a site update;
- the page answers with 5xx errors. Google's guidance on HTTP and network errors says URLs that keep returning server errors are eventually dropped from the index;
- your link was removed while the page stayed up.
Check 4 at 12 months: decide what to keep
Once a year, sort every link into one of three groups:
| Group | What you see | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Working | 200, open, your link present, page indexed | Keep, re-check next year |
| Fixable | Live but not indexed, or a removable block | Ask the seller once; record the answer |
| Lost | Dead domain, 404/410, redirect, link gone | Write it off and note the seller and platform |
The last column is where the routine pays off. After two or three cycles you know which sellers and platforms produce links that survive.
A note on the rules
Google's spam policies treat links bought to pass ranking credit, without rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow", as link spam. A re-check routine does not change that. It tells you what you actually have, which matters for any link budget, sponsored placements included.
FAQ
How often should I re-check bought backlinks?
At delivery, then at roughly 3, 6 and 12 months. Links decay gradually, and the causes change over time: early problems are usually blocks and redirects, later ones are dead domains.
Is checking the donor domain in Google enough?
No. The domain can be indexed while the page with your link is blocked or missing. Always check the exact link URL.
What counts as a lost link?
A dead domain, a 404 or 410 response, a redirect away from the page, or a page where your link is no longer in the HTML.
Sources
- Google Search Central: Block indexing with noindex
- Google Search Central: HTTP status codes and network errors
- Google Search Central: Spam policies
- SpeedyIndex case study: 15,389 bought backlinks a year later