Backlink Lifecycle & Statuses
Every backlink you submit goes through four stages before it is fully indexed. Here is what each one means and what is happening behind the scenes.
The four stages
- Submitted You added the backlink and it is in the processing queue.
- Checking The platform is verifying that the link actually exists on the source page. If the page is down or the link was removed, it will be flagged here.
- Indexing The link has been submitted to search engines for indexing. This is the waiting period while Google, Bing, or Yandex processes the request.
- Indexed A search engine has confirmed it found and indexed the backlink. The link is now contributing to your SEO.
Watch the lifecycle in action
Type a URL and click "Submit Backlink" to start.
What affects indexing speed?
- Crawl frequency. Googlebot visits popular, high-authority sites often. A backlink on a site that gets crawled daily will be found faster than one on a site crawled monthly.
- Page freshness. If the source page is already in the search engine's index, new links on that page get picked up sooner.
- Search engine queue. Submitting a link for indexing puts it in a queue. Processing times vary and are outside our control, but submission is always faster than waiting for natural discovery.
