As a Web designer, Webmaster and inhouse SEO/SEM, I was THRILLED when Google announced that its Webmaster Tools had added a “Linked From” feature. This new feature finally allowed Web site owners to find out which URLs were linking to “not found” pages on their site.

For example, let’s say you did a redesign and int he process, renamed some of your URLs. If another Web site was linking to your old URL and you move it or rename it, the link from that other site is now broken and you’re not getting credit for that link because the search engines aren’t finding anything when they follow that link. Booo!

How do we fix this? Well, for starters, I would suggest keeping the old URLs and creating a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. This preserves any ‘link juice” your older URL had acquired and transfers it to the new one. It also prevents “Not Found” links from appearing in your Google Webmaster Tools > Diagnostics > Web Crawl > Not Found list because anyone still linking to the outdated URL will automatically be directed to the new one and you don’t have to do a thing.

The “Linked From” function was going to make my life, and the lives of many SEO/SEMs, much easier because it could save us the time of trying to find out who was linking to our “Not Found” URLs. Alas, you can imagine my supreme disappointment when I logged in to use the new feature and 95 percent of the time I get is this error message.

This kind of tool is invaluable to SEOs, especially inhouse SEOs, who are trying to make the most of their limited time and budgets. By identifying sites that have outdated links to our site, we can contact their Webmaster and provide the updated link, thus increasing our link juice. Of course, IF Google’s Webmaster Tools’ “Linked From” feature worked, it’d be even better.