Technology Help Website: Check for Referring Links

Before archiving a page you need to check for other webpages or knowledge articles that link to it to avoid broken links.

There are three places to check for referring links:

Finding Links to a Page on the Technology Help Website

You can generate a list of referring links to a webpage using a Google DataStudio report the we have created for the Technology Help website.

  1. Copy the URL of the page from the Technology Help website for which you want to find referring links.
  2. Go to the Link Report in Looker Studio (z.umn.edu/itlinks).
    • Note: This table is updated monthly. The datestamp of the last update is in the top right corner. It is possible that results may include references to pages where a link to the page you are retiring has already been removed.
  3. Paste the URL into the Destination field and press Enter (Return) on your keyboard. The list of URLs refreshes showing only those pages that have links to the URL you entered.
    the itlinks lookerstudio report showing the results of the search.
  • Note: If the report finds no results, then there are no pages on the Technology Help website that link to the page. 
  • You can download the link report by clicking on the vertical ellipsis icon in the upper right corner above the results tables and selecting Export.
    • Note: the vertical ellipsis icon is not visible until the mouse is in the area just above the table on the right hand side
      the tools visible above the table.

Page Types

The report groups the page types by Explore Page, Resource Page, and all Other pages

Explore Pages and Resource Pages are views of published content that are automatically generated based on a topic or other criteria. If a page that appears on an Explore or Resource page is retired, it would automatically be removed from the Explore or Resource page. There is a filter in the top right to exclude these types of pages from the results table.

the table has resource and explore pages highlighted. The filter in the top right is also highlighted

Link Appears As

The last column of the table will display the Node ID if the link on the page is not using the "friendly" URL. In the image below, the page it.umn.edu/working-learning-campus has a link to it.umn.edu/node/129366, which is the node ID for the page it.umn.edu/services-technologies/how-tos/zoom-zoom-google-calendar-add. Either URL is valid to use.


 

Finding Referring Links in the TDX Knowledge Base

You can easily generate a report of all articles linked to another article. The resulting report will include the Group that owns any linked articles which makes it easy to figure out who to notify about the pending change. You may find links to both published and internal articles. 

  1. Go to the Editors: Check KB Article Links report. The report opens with a Body like text box pre-populated with the text ArticleDet?ID=3095.
    Report with pre-populated Body like field. The article ID number is highlighted.
  2. Replace the pre-populated Article ID number with the URL of the page for which you are checking links for.
  3. Click Run Report. A list of linked articles appears if there are any.
    Example of report after it has been run.
    Note: You can download the report by clicking the Actions menu in the upper left corner and selecting Export to Excel.

Finding Links to a Page from Sites External to the Technology Help Website

A page may also be linked to from other public locations, such as:

  • Other UMN pages, e.g., a college, departmental, or another system campus website.
  • PDFs or non-web based documentation.
  • Non-UMN pages.

Note: You can search the web to find links to the article from external locations but the chances of useful results are rare. Do NOT spend a lot of time and effort attempting to find links external to our Technology Help website.

  • If you find any links from external sites, contact the appropriate Department, College, or unit. 

Removing Links to the Retiring Page

Once you have found all the referring links to the page you are retiring, you need to update those pages or work with the owners of those pages to remove the links. 

Additional Resources

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