Help:Linksearch

Special:Linksearch is a special page which searches for external links in Wikipedia. It provides a list of external links (in all namespaces) whose target URL starts with the given URL pattern. For each link the page in which it is found is listed, along with the exact target URL of the link on that page. The results are ordered alphabetically by target URL.

(For very large or specialized external link searches, one may also use SQL queries against the  table at Quarry.)

URL search patterns
The URL pattern can be:
 * a whole top-level domain, e.g. "*.nl": Special:Linksearch/*.nl
 * a second-level domain, e.g. "*.wikimedia.org": Special:Linksearch/*.wikimedia.org; also a third-level domain etc.
 * a full domain name, e.g. "www.wikimedia.org": Special:Linksearch/www.wikimedia.org
 * a full domain name and any first part of the rest of the URL, e.g.:
 * "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/a": Special:Linksearch/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/a
 * "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2007": Special:Linksearch/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2007 (the underscore is required, even in the input box)
 * "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2007#2007_March_05": https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Linksearch&target=en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2007%232007_March_05 (the hash character is required in the input box, and %23 in the URL of the special page)

If no protocol is specified in the input box "http://" and "https://" results will be returned. To search a single protocol or another protocol, such as "ftp://", they must be given explicitly.

In the URL of the special page where the search string contains an anchor, or the first part of an anchor name, the hash character # has to be coded as "%23" and the required style is     w/index.php?title=Special:Linksearch&target=URL In each of the styles wiki/Special:Linksearch/target_page_name#anchor_name wiki/Special:Linksearch/target_page_name%23anchor_name the anchor is ignored. ("w" and "wiki" can be different on other than Wikimedia wikis.)

API
This special page's functionality can also be accessed through the Wikipedia API using list=exturlusage.

Toolforge
linksearch (currently offline) is similar to Special:LinkSearch, but additionally allows filtering by namespace, and additional placeholders may be used. For more information see Help:Linksearch/Toolforge.