Ask HN: How do you find out when someone links to your blog?

Posted by velcrovan on Thursday November 05, 2026 @09:24PM
from the ask-hn dept.

If one of your blog posts suddenly got linked from somewhere and resulted in a lot of (or even a bump in) traffic, what do you have in place that would alert you and tell you where the traffic is coming from?

( 3 comments | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: How do you find out when someone links to your blog? by krapp on Thursday November 05, 2026 @09:36PM (#50387456)

I don't have analytics built into my site at all, but I can see whatever CPanel has which is usually Webalyzer or AWStats.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you find out when someone links to your blog? by bediger4000 on Thursday November 05, 2026 @10:17PM (#50387749)

You can look at back links in marginalia site data.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you find out when someone links to your blog? by ksaj on Friday November 06, 2026 @04:06AM (#50389930)

Back when Google wasn't trying to stop people from visiting sites related to their searches, they used to have a link: operator that would give you that information. Apparently they got rid of that functionality back in 2017.

[ Parent | on HN ]