The Link discovery settings control how Linkody automatically discovers new backlinks for all the domains in your account — and let you filter out links you don't want to track. This is where you'll find the URL exclusion rules, a flexible way to reject unwanted links before they reach your reports.
How to access the link discovery settings
Click on Settings in the left menu:
Then open the Link discovery tab.
Search automatically for new links
This is enabled by default. When on, Linkody will automatically discover new backlinks to your domains.
You may want to turn this off if:
You prefer to manually manage all your tracked links
You want to limit tracking to verified or client-approved links
You want a cleaner, curated link list
You’re managing private networks or sensitive projects
Note: You can also disable automatic discovery per domain in the domain settings.
The three filtering options below are only visible while automatic discovery is enabled.
Reject links from disavowed domains
When enabled, Linkody will ignore any new links from domains in your disavow list. Learn more about disavowing links with Linkody.
Reject links from specific domains
In the "Reject links from the following domains" field, add domains you want Linkody to completely ignore when discovering new links (one per line).
Useful for:
Ignoring your own domains
Excluding low-value or spammy sources
Keeping reports focused and clean
This excludes entire domains. To exclude only specific pages or URL patterns, use the URL exclusion rules below.
Reject links whose URL matches specific rules
While the domain list above blocks whole domains, URL exclusion rules let you reject new links based on their URL — specific pages, paths, or URL patterns.
Each rule combines a condition with a text value:
contains — rejects any URL containing the text, e.g.
/forum/profile/exactly matches — rejects one exact URL, e.g.
example.com/links.htmlbegins with — rejects URLs starting with the text, e.g.
blog.example.com/tag/ends with — rejects URLs ending with the text, e.g.
/feed
How rules are applied:
⚠️ Rules apply to newly discovered links only — existing links are not affected. To remove links you already track, delete them from the Links report.
Matching is case-insensitive and ignores
http(s)://andwww.— a rule forexample.com/blogalso matcheshttps://www.Example.com/Blog/post(with begins with).A link is rejected if it matches any of your rules.
You can define up to 50 rules.
Click Add rule to add a rule, and Save changes when you're done.
Check how many of your existing links match
Before saving, click the magnifier button next to a rule to see how many of your existing links would match it — Linkody shows the count along with up to five sample URLs, so you can verify the rule does what you expect. This is a preview only: the rule will not remove those existing links.
Test a URL against your rules
Paste any URL into the Test a URL against your rules field and click Test: Linkody tells you which of your rules (if any) would reject it.
Summary
The Link discovery settings let you:
Turn automatic backlink discovery on or off for your whole account (or per domain)
Automatically reject new links from disavowed domains
Exclude entire domains from discovery
Exclude URLs matching flexible rules (contains, exactly matches, begins with, ends with)
Use the impact preview and the URL tester to fine-tune your rules with confidence.