WordPress Incoming Links Error : Updated Fix and Explanation

WordPress Incoming Links Error actually fetched through HTTP GET request from Google Blog Search. When the URL is changed WordPress Dashboard shows the error. You must have noticed the “Incoming Links” Widget on your Dashboard, we are talking about that thing, which is recently again showing up as WordPress Incoming Links Error. You might have been cursed WordPress or your Webhost, but basically no one is responsible for this WordPress Incoming Links Error.

History of WordPress Incoming Links Error !

Yeah, like everything this WordPress Incoming Links Error also has a history. As far I have found, this WordPress Incoming Links Error is happening since 2010. As there lot of people like me or us (whatever), another person tried it too – Solving Incoming Links Widget Problem in WordPress with temporary success. But right now that will not also work.

Explanation and How to fix Wordpress Incoming Links Error

This WordPress Incoming Links Error looks like this :

I have dragged the widget towards up showing infamous WordPress Incoming Links Error in the screenshot so that even a newbie will understand what actually I am talking about!

Look at the URL carefully :

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?scoring=d&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss&partner=wordpress&q=link:http://dr.abhishekghosh.net/ 

The red text is your website’s url. The blue text is showing there is some relationship with Google and WordPress. Partnership like thing. If you hover over the WordPress Incoming Links Error showing Widget’s head like on the screenshot – you will get the Configure option. Click it and copy the url and paste it on Notepad or any Text Editor.

If you paste it on your browser’s address bar and hit Enter / Return Key from keyboard, for example of this website ‘s – its

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?scoring=d&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss&partner=wordpress&q=link:https://thecustomizewindows.com/

It will redirect to :

https://www.google.com/search?ie=utf-8&q=link:https://thecustomizewindows.com/&tbm=blg&tbs=sbd:1&output=rss

It is now a different url over HTTPS and fully working url. For some reason, there is a problem with redirection, that is throwing the WordPress Incoming Links Error.

If you copy paste this new url (change the domain name) and paste inside our widget (you have clicked the configure link there, which was showing WordPress Incoming Links Error), in this way –

And click submit, it will solve the problem. But no, do not do this to keep your domain on safe side – GET request is frequently used by the spammers through various softwares, we need to make sure that the call is done by WordPress software for our domain. Otherwise to fix this WordPress Incoming Links Error, there is a rare chance of getting flagged as spammer – its Google’s url! So modify the url a bit :

http://www.google.com/search?ie=utf-8&partner=wordpress&q=link:https://thecustomizewindows.com/&tbm=blg&tbs=sbd:1&output=rss

Add that &partner=wordpress , make it http (instead of https) then save it. It will not show that WordPress Incoming Links Error anymore. All counted links will be shown.

So the principle is like this. If in future the now fixed Wordpress Incoming Links Error thing goes away and again Wordpress Incoming Links Error comes due to change in url, simply follow the main steps.

More Fun :

Note that our url we found to fix WordPress Incoming Links Error has the output as rss. If you change it to json, it will also work wherever you want like we did with Twitter™s tweet as RSS feed. But coding is a bit hard and will need API.