Help:What links here

Most pages display a "What links here" link in the toolbox in the left of the page. This displays a list of pages containing links to this page.

Pages linking to or embedding the given page (i.e. using the given page as a template) are listed. The pages using the given page as a template are marked "(as template)". For these pages, there is no way of telling if they also link to the given page.

The special page allows you to see links from all namespaces (the default) or any specified namespace. Alongside each page is a "← links" link. Clicking on this link will produce a "what links here" report for that page.

You can use this special page to find out what other pages link to a page in which you are interested. This can be useful to help provide some context for the page. It also gives you some indication of the importance of the page - a page with a lot of links is likely to be significant.

This facility also works for broken links. If you follow a broken link to the edit page then follow "What links here", you will be able to see how many other pages have broken links to the non-existent page. A lot of broken links to a single page means it is about time someone wrote an article!

You can add a link to the "what links here" report for any page like this:

[[Special:Whatlinkshere/Home Page]]

This gives:

Special:Whatlinkshere/Home Page

Redirects

The report will include pages redirected using the new redirect syntax, i.e.

#REDIRECT [[target]]

The report identifies redirect pages and lists pages linked to the redirect page. If one of these is a redirect page, pages linking to that page will also be shown. However, if one of these second level pages is also a redirect page, pages linking to that will NOT be shown. Note that double redirects do not work, i.e. if a page is redirected to a page which is itself redirected, the second redirect will not work. This report is a useful way of identifying the pages affected by such problems.

Templates

"What links here" uses the page as it will appear on screen. Therefore, if page X has a link to page Y because it uses template Z, a "What links here" report for page Y will list page X.