How to automatically find inbound ON-SITE links to an old page?

[Greg Baka]

I am repairing one of my old websites. It has a handful of old "obsolete" pages that are still getting visits, so I don't want to just delete these pages and get 404 errors...

I think that most of the visits are coming from links on MY OWN SITE. And I would like to find and change those links.

1) Is there any way to automatically make a list of all the ON-SITE pages that link to a page on my own site?

2) Is there any way to automatically find all the OFF-SITE pages that link to my page? (if they are good links, I may convert the old page to a landing page)

Thanks!

[TechnoBear]

I don't know of any method that will find 100% of links (but that doesn't mean there isn't one).

Would you not be better off setting up 301 redirects for each of the pages you're deleting, to redirect to the most appropriate current page (which may be different for each one)?

[Greg Baka]

Unfortunately I can't do the 301 re-directs at this time

I have a vague memory of some special text put in Google Search that returns the inbound linking pages. Something like "inbound: mysite.com/page2.html" Anybody know more about that?

Since I am mostly concerned with fixing the links on my own site, what I really am hoping for is something like a site mapping program that tells me what pages are connected to eachother. Anybody know of such a thing?

Thanks in advance!

[TechnoBear]

There have been a number of threads in the Internet Marketing forum about tools for checking backlinks. You might find some help in these. e.g.
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/show...k-link-checker
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/show...o-my-backlinks
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/show...-backlink-data

[Greg Baka]

Did a little reading, and solved my own problem

Once I figured out the right words it got easier. I kept using the name ON-SITE LINKS for the mysterious path that people were taking to old obsolete pages on my site. But the right term is INTERNAL LINKS.

Once you know that, you can just go to your Google Webmaster account, then follow Dashboard > Traffic > Internal Links and either scan down the list or manually enter the old obsolete page you want to explore. It will list all of your own pages that link to that page.

[mthompson]

You can use Google Webmaster Tools to find out the linking pages of Old Sites. Also it will display all possible errors which will be highly helpful if you have done some major update in the URL structure.

[squadron]

What is the site built in? Is it a database driven site? If so, you could export the database, then parse all the internal links in the web sites sql file.