Ahrefs Link Removed Caused By Deleted Page?
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Brief Overview
In the “Lost Links” report within Ahrefs, the status “Link removed” with the reason “Deleted page” specifically indicates that the referring page (the source URL that previously linked to you) returned a 4xx (usually 404 Not Found or 410 Gone) status code during the most recent crawl.
This is distinct from a link being manually stripped from live content. Technically, the link didn’t just disappear; the entire environment hosting that link ceased to exist. For SEO directors and strategists, this distinction changes the response protocol entirely. We aren’t dealing with an editorial decision to remove a citation; we are dealing with structural decay on the web or a specific publisher’s site architecture.
The immediate implication depends on the quality of the lost domain. If high-authority referrals are deleting pages, you have a PR retention problem or the partner is pruning content. If it’s low-quality spam, this is natural ecosystem churn.
The “Red Alert” That Wasn’t: A Case Study in Link Velocity
I recall a panic call from a Fintech SaaS client about two years ago. They were obsessed with their backlink profile—specifically, the raw count. Over a weekend, their Ahrefs dashboard showed a cliff-drop: nearly 4,000 links lost in 48 hours.
The marketing lead was convinced they had been hit by a negative SEO attack or that Google had devalued their profile entirely. They were ready to pivot their entire Q3 budget into emergency link acquisition to “stop the bleeding.”
I pulled the raw CSV export from the Lost Links report. Filtering by the “Reason” column, 95% of the drops were flagged as “Deleted page.”
When we manually inspected a sample set of the referring domains, we realized the pattern. A network of low-quality scraper sites—sites that automatically aggregate content and had picked up the client’s press releases—had gone offline. The hosting accounts for these domains had likely expired.
The Decision: We did absolutely nothing.
The Outcome: Rankings actually stabilized. We saved the client $30k in panic-induced link building spend. The “loss” was actually a cleanup of digital debris that carried zero link equity in the first place.
This experience solidified my stance: Ahrefs is a data aggregator, not a consultant. It reports the absence of a signal, but it requires human context to determine if that absence matters.
Deep Dive: Decoding “Link Removed / Deleted Page”
The Technical Mechanism
When the Ahrefs bot (AhrefsBot) revisits a URL that previously contained a link to your site, it expects a 200 OK status code. If it encounters a 404 or 410, it marks the link as lost with the “Deleted page” classifier.
This is a source-side issue. Your page (the target) is fine; the donor page is dead.
Differentiating Signal from Noise
Not all deleted pages are created equal. In enterprise SEO, I categorize these losses into three buckets to determine priority:
- The “Good Riddance” Bucket:
- Profile: Scraper sites, coupon directories, or abandoned blogs.
- Action: Ignore. These links likely passed no PageRank. Their disappearance might actually improve your ratio of quality links.
- The “Content Pruning” Bucket:
- Profile: High DR (Domain Rating) publishers or industry blogs updating their archives.
- Scenario: A site like HubSpot or Search Engine Journal might delete a 2018 article to consolidate authority into a 2024 guide. If you were linked in the 2018 piece, that link is now gone.
- Action: This hurts. You’ve lost vintage, high-authority equity. You need to check if the deleted URL redirects elsewhere. If it redirects to a new page where you aren’t mentioned, that is a prime outreach target.
- The “False Positive” Bucket:
- Profile: Sites with unstable servers or strict firewall rules blocking AhrefsBot.
- Scenario: The page exists for users, but returns a 404 or 403 (Forbidden) to the crawler.
- Action: Verify manually. If the link is live in a browser, ignore the tool data.
The Role of Crawl Budget and Frequency
It is important to note that Ahrefs does not crawl the entire web instantly. A “Link removed” notification today might refer to a page that was actually deleted three weeks ago. The timestamp in the report reflects when Ahrefs noticed the drop, not necessarily when the server threw the 404.
Comparison: Interpreting Link Loss Reasons
In my audits, I use this matrix to explain to stakeholders why we are seeing red numbers in the dashboard and whether we should care.
| Ahrefs Status | Technical Definition | Best Use Case / Interpretation | Risk Level | Strategic Response |
| Link Removed: Deleted Page | Source URL returns 404/410. | Identifying site-wide decay on partner sites or spam networks dying off. | Low (usually natural churn) | Verify: Is the site valuable? If Yes: Check for redirects. If No: Ignore. |
| Link Removed: Link Removed | Source URL is 200 OK, but the <a> tag is gone. | This is an editorial decision. The editor actively removed your mention. | High (Intentional removal) | Investigate: Did we violate guidelines? Did a competitor buy the placement? |
| Link Removed: Crawl Error | DNS resolution failure or timeout. | Server instability on the source site. Often temporary. | Negligible | Wait for the next crawl cycle. Do not report this to clients yet. |
| Link Removed: Redirect | Source URL now 301/302s elsewhere. | Content consolidation. Equity might still pass if the redirect chain is clean. | Medium | Check the destination URL. Is the link still present on the new page? |
Common Mistakes in Managing Lost Links
1. The “Reclamation” Email Blast
I often see junior SEOs download the “Lost Links” list and immediately start emailing webmasters asking, “Why did you delete the page linking to me?”
Why this fails: If a webmaster deleted a page, they did it for a reason—usually to clean up their site architecture or remove outdated content. Asking them to restore a deleted page is asking them to undo their content strategy. It’s futile.
The Senior Approach: Instead of asking for restoration, suggest a replacement. “I noticed you removed the article on X. If you’re redirecting that traffic to your new guide on Y, our data would be a great fit there too.”
2. Disavowing 404s
There is a persistent myth that you need to disavow links from deleted pages to “clean up” your profile.
Why this fails: Google’s Penguin algorithm (and modern core updates) already ignores links from 404 pages because the page doesn’t exist. Disavowing a URL that is already dead is a waste of billable hours. It adds unnecessary bloat to your disavow file, which Google suggests using only as a last resort.
3. Ignoring the “Broken Redirect” Opportunity
When a high-authority page is deleted (causing your link loss), the webmaster often fails to set up a redirect. This creates a 404 on their site.
The Senior Approach: This is a prime “Broken Link Building” opportunity—but in reverse. You can reach out to the webmaster: “Hey, you have a broken page on your site (the one that used to link to me). It has backlinks pointing to it. You should probably 301 redirect it to preserve your authority.” Ideally, you suggest they redirect it to a page where your link can be reinstated, or you simply bank the goodwill for a future request.
Verdict & Strategic Next Steps
Seeing “Link removed / Deleted page” in Ahrefs is usually a symptom of the internet’s natural decay rate, not a penalty or an attack.
If you are managing an enterprise site, do not report on these raw numbers. Filter your analysis:
- Filter by DR: Only investigate deleted pages from domains with DR > 30 (or whatever your quality threshold is).
- Filter by Traffic: Prioritize pages that were actually sending referral traffic (cross-reference with GA4).
- Check for Redirects: Use a bulk HTTP status checker on the lost URLs. If they 301 redirect to a relevant page, the link equity might still be intact, even if Ahrefs reports the specific link as “lost.”
My final advice: If the deleted pages are low quality, let them go. A cleaner link profile is often better than a bloated one. If the deleted pages are high quality, your strategy is not “recovery”—it is “re-negotiation.” The old location is gone; you need to pitch a new one.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. This status has nothing to do with Google penalties or manual actions against your site. It is purely a technical report stating that the website linking to you has deleted the specific page where your link lived. It is an issue with their site architecture, not your SEO performance.
Absolutely not. There is nothing to disavow because the link technically no longer exists. If the page returns a 404 or 410 status, Google’s crawler drops it from the index naturally. Adding these URLs to your disavow file is a waste of time and bloats the file with useless data.
Rarely. Since the webmaster intentionally removed the page, asking them to “put it back” is usually ineffective. Your best strategy is to see if they have a new version of that content (e.g., a “2025 Update” that replaced the deleted “2024 Guide”) and pitch them to include your link in the new version.
Ahrefs flags this when the specific URL returns a 404 error, even if the homepage works fine. This often happens when sites change their URL structure (e.g., changing /blog/post-1 to /news/post-1) without setting up a proper 301 redirect. In this case, the link is lost because the bot hit a dead end.
