What Backlinks shows#
Backlinks (under Competition in the left menu) shows the links pointing to any domain: how many there are, which sites they come from, what text they use and how the profile changes over time. Links from other sites are one of the strongest signals Google uses, so this tells you how much authority a site has and where it came from.
You can open the profile of your own site or of a competitor.
Opening a profile#
- Open Backlinks.
- The domain field is filled from the project. Type another domain to look at a competitor.
- Click Show backlinks. The price is on the button.
The first load fetches the summary and the first page of links and referring domains. Everything after that — switching tabs, filtering, sorting, the Anchors and New and lost tabs — works on what you already loaded and is free. To widen the data, use Load more on the Links or Domains tab; that button shows its own price.
The headline cards#
| Card | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Backlinks | Total links found, with the share that is dofollow |
| Referring domains | Distinct sites linking, with the domain's rank on a 0–100 scale |
| New | Links found in the last 30 days |
| Lost | Links that disappeared in the last 30 days |
If new or lost links were not measured for the domain, the card says "not measured" instead of zero.
Tabs#
Links#
Every link with: the linking page, its domain, the target page on the site, anchor text, link type (text, image, redirect, canonical), attributes (dofollow, nofollow, UGC, sponsored), first seen and last seen dates. Tags like NOFOLLOW, UGC or CANONICAL mark special links.
Filter by Dofollow / Nofollow / UGC, search, and sort. Export CSV saves the table.
Domains#
One row per referring domain: how many links it sends, its rank, how many are dofollow, and when it first linked. This is the best view for judging quality: ten links from one site count for much less than ten links from ten sites.
Anchors#
The anchor texts of the links you loaded, grouped: text, number of links, number of domains, share of dofollow and first seen date. The tab says which rows it is based on, for example "from the 46 backlinks pulled". On large sites load more links on the Links tab to widen it.
What to look for: most healthy profiles are dominated by brand names and plain URLs. A profile where most anchors are an exact commercial keyword looks unnatural.
New and lost#
Links and domains gained or lost in the last 30 days, among the rows you loaded. Use it to spot a lost link from an important partner, or to see which new links a competitor is earning.
Using backlinks with other tools#
- Competitors › Competitor analysis has a "Backlinks — you vs them" table comparing you with up to three competitors, plus a Link gap: sites that link to competitors but not to you. See Competitors.
- + Campaign on a referring domain sends it to Link Builder as a prospect (when Link Builder is available on your account).
- The dashboard's Backlink profile block reads your last loaded summary.
- Email me can send you a weekly or monthly backlinks update for a project (Alerts and emails).
Reading quality, not just numbers#
- Referring domains matter more than backlinks. One site with a sitewide footer link can produce thousands of backlinks.
- Relevance matters. A link from a local business association beats a link from an unrelated directory.
- Dofollow vs nofollow. Both are normal. A natural profile has some of each.
- Lost links are normal. Pages get deleted. Investigate only losses from important sites.
Broken backlinks#
Broken backlinks are links from other sites that point to a page on your site which is gone or broken (an error answer). Open Backlinks › Broken backlinks to see each one: the page that links to you, the address it points to, the error, and when it was last seen. Fixing them is usually a redirect from the old address to the closest page that still exists, or restoring the page.
A list costs 20 credits per 100 rows, and the price is shown before you run it. The last list is kept for a week, so you can read it again without paying. Your AI client reads the saved copy for free (broken_backlinks).
Spam score#
Every referring domain has a spam score from 0 to 100: a higher number means more signals that a site is spam-like. The Backlinks table has a Spam column you can sort and filter by, and the cards show a summary. Rows the app marks SPAM are the high-score ones. A score that was not measured is shown as not measured, never as zero, so a blank cell does not mean a clean domain.
Spam score is also a column in Batch analysis (see Keyword research), so you can compare several domains in one table.
Common questions#
Why are the numbers different from other tools? Every link index crawls the web differently. Use one tool consistently and compare trends over time.
Do I pay again to switch tabs? No. Tabs, filters and sorting use the loaded data. Only Show backlinks and Load more cost credits.
Why does Anchors say it is based on only some links? Anchors and New and lost are built from the links you loaded. Load more on the Links tab to include more.
What is DR? Domain Rating by Ahrefs. It appears where available, for example in the competitor comparison. The rank on the Domains card is a separate 0–100 score from our link index.
Can I disavow links from here? No. Rankfinity shows the profile; disavowing is done in Google Search Console.