Help:What links here

What links here is a feature that lists all of the pages that transclude, link, or redirect to a specified page. These are sometimes referred to as backlinks. You can access this feature by clicking on '' in the toolbox, usually on the left-side of the page. You can also use the tool by visiting Special:WhatLinksHere and then entering the page you want to look up, or link to it in a page by typing, replacing Name of page with the name of the page you want to look up. The function works even if the current page in question does not exist yet.

The list can be filtered to only show the pages that link or redirect to the current page, or transclude it. The list can also be filtered to only show pages in a particular namespace. The list is sorted by page ID, which usually translates to the date of creation.

The what links here page can be useful in a number of ways:


 * It can be used to roughly estimate the popularity of an article. An article that has many links to it is probably of notable importance and should be of the best quality. An article that does not have a lot of links to it may be of less importance, or the article simply needs more links in different places.
 * It can be used to provide context if the subject material of the article is unclear. For example, if a page that doesn't exist yet contains a lot of links from pages about Hollywood films, then the subject of the non-existent article may be about, or closely related to, Hollywood films.
 * It can be used to facilitate proper disambiguation.

Limitations
Links in edit summaries, special pages, and those made using the external link syntax do not appear in what links here. Automatically generated links from categories to their subcategories and member pages are not listed, nor are automatically generated links from subpages to their parent pages. Links from outside will not be shown in what links here.

If a page is linked to using an anchor link, the page will appear in what links here, but the precise target will not be shown in the list. If a page is simply mentioned in an article, but not actually linked, it will not appear in what links here.

The  parser function will cause the specified page to appear in what links here, even though no actual link was produced.

Redirects
Redirects are marked as such in what links here, and indented under their list entry is another list containing all incoming links that go through that redirect. If a redirect is a double redirect, the indentation will be tripled for pages that go through the double redirect.

Transclusion
Pages that transclude the current page are marked as such in what links here. This can be used to see where a template is being used. Note that if Template A is used in Template B, all the pages that use Template B will appear in the what links here for Template A. This can make it a problem for templates that are used to power other templates, such as Infobox, as the list can become very long.

Transcluding the what links here page
It is possible to transclude the list of pages on what links here by typing  onto a page, replacing Name of page with the specified page to query. Optionally, the list can be configured to only show pages in a particular namespace by providing the namespace number in the namespace parameter. For example, to only show pages in the main namespace, type.