How long do backlinks last? Link rot and survival rates
Most backlinks do not last for ever. Ahrefs found that about two thirds of links had disappeared over roughly nine years, and Linkody's 2026 data shows 63% of monitored links about one year old were still live. Pages get deleted, sites close and links get edited out.
In short
- An Ahrefs study dated February 2024 found that 66.5% of links pointing to 2,062,173 sampled websites had rotted since January 2013.
- Linkody's June 2026 analysis of more than 865,000 links monitored by its customers found that 89% of links about three months old and 63% of links about one year old were live when checked.
- The largest single cause in the Ahrefs study was the linking page being dropped, at 47.7% of lost links, followed by the link being removed from a live page at 34.2%.
- In the Linkody data, links on domains with a Domain Authority under 10 survived at 33%, against 70% on domains at 30 to 49.
- Marketplace guarantees vary widely, from three months of removal protection at Collaborator to 36 months at WhitePress, by the vendors' own statements in October 2026.
A backlink lasts as long as three things hold: the page it sits on stays online, the link stays on that page, and the page you were linked to still exists. All three fail over time. The best long-run measurement comes from Ahrefs, which reported in a study dated February 2024 that 66.5% of the links pointing to more than two million sampled websites had rotted since January 2013.
Over shorter periods, the only large recent dataset we could open is from the monitoring tool Linkody. In June 2026 it reported that 63% of the tracked links that were about one year old were live when checked. Both figures come with caveats, set out below.
What the studies say
| Study | Sample | Finding |
|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs, February 2024 | Links to 2,062,173 websites, crawl data from January 2013 | 66.5% of links had rotted. Counting crawl errors and other problems, Ahrefs put the total lost at 74.5% |
| Pew Research Center, May 2024 | Webpages collected from 2013 to 2023 | 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 were no longer available. 23% of news webpages contained at least one broken link |
| Linkody, June 2026 | More than 865,000 backlinks monitored by its customers | Share of links of each age that were live when checked: 89% at three months, 63% at one year, 46% at two to five years, 31% beyond five years |
The Ahrefs and Pew studies describe the web as a whole. Pew’s is not about SEO at all, which makes it a useful independent check: pages vanish at a steady rate whether or not anyone is building links.
The Linkody data is different in kind. It covers links that customers of a monitoring tool chose to track, which are mostly links somebody built or bought. Linkody is a vendor describing its own data, the sample is not random, its analysis excluded trial accounts and competitor tracking, and the age figures are a snapshot of links of each age, not one group of links followed over time. Treat it as a reported picture of built links, not as a law.
Within that picture, Linkody reports an average lifespan of about 20 months for links that die, with 52% of the losses happening inside the first twelve months.
Why links disappear
The Ahrefs study broke lost links down by cause.
| Cause | Share of lost links |
|---|---|
| Linking page dropped from Ahrefs’ index | 47.7% |
| Link removed from a page that still exists | 34.2% |
| Crawl errors | 6.45% |
| 301 or 302 redirect | 5.99% |
| Page not found (404) | 4.11% |
| Not canonical | 0.82% |
| Noindex | 0.73% |
Two causes account for more than four in five losses. Either the whole page dropped out, or an editor took the link out while the page stayed. Linkody’s 2026 data points the same way. Of all the links it monitored, 56% were live and correct, 17% had been removed from a page that was still live, 14% sat on pages returning errors and 13% hit crawl errors. Under 1% had a changed anchor or attribute.
Not every loss is at the far end. If you delete or move the page that was linked to and leave no redirect, the link still exists but points at nothing. That half of the problem is in your hands.
What predicts survival
The quality of the site. In Linkody’s data, links on domains with a Moz Domain Authority under 10 survived at 33%, against 70% on domains at 30 to 49. Weak sites are abandoned, sold or cleaned out more often.
Whether the publisher cares about the page. A link inside an article the publisher wrote for its own readers is tied to content it wants to keep. Practitioners report that niche edits are removed more often than guest posts, because the publisher has invested nothing in the change. That is a reported pattern, not a measured rate.
Where the page sits. Pages reachable from a category or the homepage tend to stay maintained. Pages buried in an archive are the first to go in a site redesign.
Whether the link was paid for. A link placed for a fee is kept for as long as the agreement says, or as long as the seller remembers. A link an editor chose freely has no end date, but it also has no guarantee.
Paid placements: read the guarantee
We found no independent study that tracks paid placements separately, so there is no reliable survival rate to quote. What exists are the terms sellers publish.
WhitePress stated a 36-month publication guarantee with daily monitoring on its site in October 2026. Collaborator stated three months of free removal protection. These are the vendors’ own statements, recorded in our WhitePress desk review and Collaborator desk review.
A guarantee is only useful if you can prove the loss. Sellers also change links without removing them: a followed link becomes nofollow, the page is set to noindex, or the article is moved where no internal link reaches it. Agree in writing how long the link stays, which attribute it carries and what happens if it changes. Our lesson on buying backlinks with less risk lists the terms to ask for.
What to do about link loss
Monitor. Check links you built weekly for the first three months, then monthly. How to track backlinks gives the checks and cadence.
Reclaim. Many losses can be reversed. If your page moved, add a redirect. If an editor dropped the link in a rewrite, ask. If the page was deleted, offer a replacement page to link from. Link reclamation is usually the cheapest link work available, because the decision to link was already made once.
Claim. If a paid link fails inside its guarantee, claim the replacement or refund promptly and keep the screenshot from the day it went live.
Budget for it. Treat a share of this year’s links as gone by next year. The share depends on your sources, so measure your own: count links live at 90 and 365 days as a percentage of links built. If you have no history, Linkody’s 63% at one year is a cautious starting assumption for built links, not a forecast.
Report it. A report that shows only new links hides the loss. The lesson on link building reports explains how to show survival alongside new links.
What we do not know
No public study we could find separates earned editorial links from paid ones with a random sample, and none measures how often a lost link leads to a lost ranking. A link can also stay live and stop counting, if Google drops the page from its index, and no outside tool can confirm that for certain.
Where to go next
Fixing broken inbound links is one of the first jobs in a backlink audit. Terms such as link rot and link reclamation are defined in the glossary.
Common questions
Are backlinks permanent?
No. A link lasts only as long as the page it sits on stays online, stays indexed and keeps the link. Every large study finds steady losses year after year.
How long does a paid backlink last?
It depends on the terms and the site. We found no independent study of paid placements alone. Guarantees range from a few months to three years, and after that the publisher may remove or change the link.
What is link rot?
Link rot is when a link stops pointing to its intended page, usually because the linking page or the target page was deleted or moved. Ahrefs and the Pew Research Center have both measured it.
Why do backlinks disappear?
The most common reasons are the linking page being deleted or dropped, an editor removing the link during an update, the site closing, a redirect, or the page being set to noindex.
Do lost backlinks hurt rankings?
They can, if the lost links were ones Google counted. One lost link rarely matters. A steady loss that outpaces new links, or the loss of a few strong links to an important page, can show up in rankings.
