Item13621: Backlinks do not show true backlinks

When I click on backlinks, I do not get pages linking to a page, but all pages which contain the name of the topic. Actually, it's simply a search result, but not showing any links.

Imagine there is a page called "Foo". When I click on backlinks, I will get a list of ALL pages containing the word "Foo", even if they do not link to the page entitled "Foo". So that's not really a backlink.

See the backlinks to the Sandbox.Foswiki page I just created. It's not possible that over 300 pages are linking to that page. There must be a mistake in there somewhere.

-- LieVen - 16 Aug 2015

Backlinks today are generated by text search. So, confirming this but re-prioritizing it to be an enhancement. Backlinks really needs some significant effort. Unfortunately with dynamic linking, the search for backlinks has to be rather fuzzy. Links can be made in many ways:

• Square bracket links
  • Square bracket links with "spaced" topic names.
• <a href...>= style links
• Links generated from expanded macros:
  • Simple ones like %SYSTEMWEB%, %USERSWEB% ...
  • Complex generated topic names from spreadsheet =%CALC% macro expansion,
• Links triggered by non-default plugins, like ControlWikiWordPlugin, and FindElsewherePlugin
• Links generated by INCLUDE macro parameters
• Links in the Parent META, and in other form field and topic data.

And then non-linking controls have to be considered; The NOAUTOLINK preference, <noautolink> blocks and the various escapes: !, <nop>, or any preceding text that would block a link. The NOAUTOLINK preference is a challenge, because it could be set for a web, for ex. but then overridden in topics or globally by a User's setting. So what one user sees for links may not be what another user gets. And to make that more complex, as a setting, it is ignored when set in an INCLUDE, so any INCLUDEd text will be linking in some places, and non-linking in others.

"True backlinks" would be a very significant effort. I marked it confirmed, but this is major enough that it should really have a "Feature Proposal". A lot of design decisions would be needed, and it probably would needs a backend database to track links with any hope of reasonable performance. This is not an issue that can be fixed in a patch release.

-- GeorgeClark - 16 Aug 2015

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