Backlink checker

Run the same domain through three backlink checkers and you will get three different totals, sometimes off by a factor of two. None of them is wrong. Each tool counts what its own crawler has seen, and no crawler has seen the whole web. This free backlink checker reads from a commercial link index and shows you the parts of a link profile that change decisions: how many sites link to you, which ones carry weight, what words they use and how much of it passes link equity.

What does this backlink checker show?

Enter a domain and you get a summary (backlinks, referring domains, referring IPs, link rank, dofollow share, first seen), the top 10 referring domains ordered by rank, and the top 10 anchor texts ordered by backlink count. With your email you get the top 100 of each list as CSV. Subdomains are included; lost links are not.

The numbers come from DataForSEO's backlinks index, which is the same source several paid SEO suites license. We query it live and cache the result for 24 hours per domain.

Why do backlink counts differ between tools?

Backlink tools disagree because each runs its own crawler over a different slice of the web, refreshes pages on a different schedule, and applies different counting rules: whether a lost link still counts, whether links from a site's own subdomains count, whether links to a redirecting URL count toward the final one. A number from one index is only comparable to another number from the same index.

Our view: treat every total as a sample, and look at direction and proportion rather than absolutes. If a competitor has four times your referring domains in this index, they will have roughly four times yours in any other index too. The exact figure is less useful than that ratio.

How to read the numbers

Referring domains matter more than raw backlinks. One site linking to you from 500 footer pages counts as 500 backlinks and one referring domain; the second number is the honest one. Referring IPs go one step further and show how many distinct servers those domains sit on, which helps spot networks of sites that are really one site.

Dofollow share is the proportion of backlinks without a nofollow attribute, estimated from the link attributes the index recorded. Google says it treats nofollow, sponsored and ugc as hints rather than directives (Qualify your outbound links), so a low share is not a disaster, but a profile that is almost all nofollow usually means the links come from comments, profiles or paid placements.

Anchor text tells you how other sites describe you. A healthy profile is dominated by brand names and plain URLs, with a scattering of descriptive phrases. If the top anchors are exact-match commercial keywords, the links were probably built rather than earned, and Google's link spam policies describe what happens next.

First seen is the date the index first recorded any link to the domain. It is a reasonable proxy for how long a site has been earning attention, which is useful when a new domain has a surprisingly large count.

What is link rank, and is it domain authority?

Link rank is the index's 0 to 1,000 estimate of how much link strength points at a domain, calculated along the lines of PageRank. We show it divided by 10 so it sits on the familiar 0 to 100 scale, and we label it Authority. It is a third-party metric. Google does not publish a domain-level score and does not use any vendor's, so a high number is evidence of links, not a promise of rankings. The domain authority checker compares this score with Open PageRank for up to five domains at once, and the glossary explains what domain authority is and why DA, DR and other scores never match.

What you get free, and what the email unlocks

The free check gives you everything you need to judge a domain at a glance. The unlocked version is for working through a profile: 100 referring domains with rank, backlink count and first-seen date, 100 anchors, and CSVs you can sort, filter or paste into a spreadsheet alongside a competitor's. We ask for an email because the index charges us per request; we do not call, and the same email unlocks the gated data on every tool here.

What to do next

Check two or three competitors next to your own domain and look at the gap in referring domains, then read the backlink analysis guide for how to turn that gap into a list of link targets. If your profile looks healthy but rankings are not, the problem is usually on the site itself: run the full audit below to find out.