Special:LinkSearch presently provides a rather messy and inflexible interface. It is useful only for finding links to sites that are rarely linked, as the list quickly becomes cluttered. Of the possible improvements, two would greatly increase its usability for editors:

• Allow the search to be easily limited to a single namespace. This would allow editors to focus on links appearing in articles rather than in talk-page discussions, userpages, etc
  • Filed (earlier) as T12593: Make namespace filter in Special:Linksearch efficient enough for wgMiserMode

• Identify whether the link appears in the article body, references, or at the end of the article. By consensus, certain links are not considered to be reliable sources but may be used as external links; generally, external links should not appear inline (except as interwiki links).
  • Filed as T145143: Make Special:LinkSearch identify where the link appears within the page - inline, or in citation, or in end section

Nikkimaria (talk) 00:45, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

This card tracks a proposal from the 2015 Community Wishlist Survey: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey
This proposal received 18 support votes, and was ranked #46 out of 107 proposals. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey/Search#Improve_Special:LinkSearch

See also: T102064: Create a tool to display and filter data from Schema:ExternalLinksChange