Help:What links here

Every page has a link labelled "What links here" (or, more generally, labelled with the text in mediawiki:whatlinkshere).

This backlink facility can be used to see which other pages in the same project contain a link to a given page. The list is sorted by page id - that is, by date of creation of the page.

Limitations

 * not listed are subpages that just have an automatic link to a page

Cases of transclusion

 * in the case of a template, referral to it is treated as link
 * a link from a template is only treated as such, not as link from the pages that show the link because they refer to the template
 * in the case of an image, using it in a page is listed in the third section of the image description page, but not in "What links here" of that page

Other uses
This facility works also for a page that does not exist. The What links here button is also on the edit page on which one arrives when following a broken link.

One can also use a link of the form Special:Whatlinkshere/John Smith, or equivalently (here on Meta) http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=John_Smith

The feature can also be applied to itself and other special pages, e.g.:


 * http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Special%3AWhatlinkshere
 * http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Special%3ARecentchanges
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Special%3AWhatlinkshere
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Special%3ARecentchanges