Solving Incoming Links Widget Problem in WordPress

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

If you are a WordPress 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 ). 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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  • Phil

    The issue I am seeing is that the new syntax given here works in a browser, however, WordPress (3.2.1) refuses to save the requires braces around the domain name.

    … link:[http://address.com] …

    is being saved as

    … link:http://address.com …

    and ^^ this syntax doesn’t work.

    • http://nichpakaich.com nichive

      WordPress 3.2.1 sure has some issues that need to be taken care of. I have write one bug about theme upload

  • http://bloggingwithoutablog.com Barbara Swafford

    This was just what I was looking for. I followed your instructions and the RSS feed now works perfectly/ Thank you!

  • http://www.dramakorner.com khan

  • Pingback: Solving Incoming Links Widget Problem in WordPress from “Niche Blog Experience” | YG Story

  • http://www.oldsweetsong.com Amy@OldSweetSong

    thank you thank you thank!

  • http://ajnabii.com Ajnabii

    Thanks for the help RSS error problem has been solved on my blog. thank you very much.

  • http://sdbwebsolutions.com Serg

    Hi!
    I have the same problem with the incoming links. The thing is, I was able to see “1 link” a couple of days ago and now it’s gone!

    I started to check worpress forums and found a this post about editing the rss URL.
    I checked it and the only difference was the hI=en not being in the URL, so I tried it and didn’t make any difference. No incoming links showing up yet.

    My URL was fine like as seen on the link:
    http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?scoring=d&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss&partner=wordpress&q=link:http://sdbwebsolutions.com/

    I appreciate if you have any suggestions to solve this problem. Thanks so much:)

    • http://nichpakaich.com nichive

      We really are depending on Google’s blogsearch engine. The hl=en didn’t really play a crucial part, actually.

      It’s all about time, until Google pick up an incoming link to your blog (from other page, where people link to your page).

  • Trackero
    • http://nichpakaich.com/ Nichive

      The point of using “Incoming Links” is to tell if there are pages across the net referring back to your page.

      That script of yours is missing the link:url part, and the result is simply enlisting all of your domain’s page.
      I don’t think that url works to get all incoming links. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Redbourn/100002266741122 Michael Redbourn

    Did what you said and incoming links showed instantly!

    Thank you!

  • http://www.facebook.com/mfcarter Mark Carter

    Tried doing what you said and incoming links show up in the browser but in wordpress 3.3.1 they do not. Word press takes away the [] around the URL of my site.  

    • http://nichpakaich.com/ Nichive

      Actually, I haven’t upgraded my engine to the latest version.
      I’ll try it later.

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