Solving Incoming Links Widget Problem in WordPress

June 19, 2010 by · 39 Comments
Filed under: How-To 

If you are a user, then you’d probably notice the “Incoming Links” widget that reside in your Dashboard. Recently there’s been an issue with error message being displayed. Well, if you are looking for a solution, then read on.

The “Incoming Links” widget works by searching the web for any page that is linking to any page in your website (read my post about inbound link) And the way to do that is by taking advantage of the Google Blog Search.

By sending a GET request, one can get a search result in an output. Then the WordPress engine (and its built-in function) will parse the and show the result in widget that you can custom (how many records to show, etc.)

Well, if it’s a built-in functions, then why it’s not working?
Did WordPress made a flaw in the development phase?

I don’t think a world-class team such as the WordPress Development Team, would make such silly mistake. The one reason that might cause you the error, is probably the wrong parameter for the GET request (read about HTTP GET request).

Since a response, which is the output of a GET request, is replied upon the parameters that was sent. Then sending the proper request parameter(s) is definitely an important thing to look into. So, don’t expect something in return if you can’t define your request in the correct way.

Luckily, you don’t need to be a web programmer to solve the “Incoming Links” issue. All you have to do is: change the GET request to the correct syntax (the one that is acceptable by Google Blog Search). And here it is:

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&q=link%3A[your-]&scoring=d&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss

Remember to replace the highlighted syntax with your domain name
Updated: I change the ‘link:’ part with ‘link%3A’ 

Now that you have the right command, you can change the broken “Incoming Links” Widget’s RSS Feed URL. Just mouse over the Title part of the Widget (on the far right side of the “Incoming Links” text) and you will notice a “Configure” link being shown, click it and change the URL with the new one.

wordpress-incoming-links-widgets

Configuring WordPress Incoming Links Widget

Don’t forget to click one the “Submit” button after you finished with all the available options there.

That’s it.

Unless Google made some tweaking with their Blog Search Feed, that is all you have to do.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/MonstaMunch Kyle Harris

    i also have the same problem tried multiple things but nothings working just keep getting rss error, my url is http://www.aboveandbelow.org can u help me out,

    strange thing is my other wordpress sites works fine 

    • http://nichpakaich.com/ Nichive

      After a brief inspection, your site is simply new. Not much of pages can be found over there, and it’s more likely no one have post any referring link to your page. That’s why google found no page (thus, no result).

  • http://andy.kinjeng.net/ Angudy

     http://wordpress.org/support/topic/dashboard-incoming-links-rss-error-1?replies=7#post-2685226

  • http://profiles.google.com/almeraseg Bethe Almeras

    Thanks — did what you said, but am still getting an error message. The blog has been around since 2009, so not sure why it says a feed could not be found. http://www.grassstainguru.com 

    • http://nichpakaich.com/ Nichive

      I’ve checked your site, and you do have incoming links. Make sure you type the link correctly, or see Angudy tips.

  • http://ajnabii.com/ Ajnabii

    Well  nice informative post, I did same that you mentioned in your post but still i’m getting same error RSS feed could not be found. i think something is wrong in wordpress ?

  • http://twitter.com/nitwitseattle Robin

    that was SO simple – bless your heart

  • Pingback: Creating a WP blog: Incoming Links…??? | Matthew Cunningham

  • Paracoupons

    I tried this buy the error keeps showing in the “Incomming Links” box.
    Please help!!!
    http://www.easy-couponing.com
    Thanks.

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