E-commerce Conversion Audit
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Inbound links, anchor text, follow status, and domain authority — instantly. No signup.
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What it means
Backlinks are still the strongest single ranking signal Google uses, two decades after PageRank.
The questions every SEO ends up asking — How many sites link to me? How authoritative are they? What anchor text are they using? Am I losing links faster than I'm gaining them? — are all questions about your backlink profile, and all of them require a fresh dataset to answer honestly. That's what this tool gives you, in a public report you can share.
The data layer underneath is our internal backlink index — a multi-billion link database we maintain and refresh continuously. We pull a fresh snapshot at scan time and surface the signals that actually move rankings: total backlink volume, the count of unique referring domains (more important than raw link count), the dofollow-to-nofollow split, the top 20 anchor texts, and lost backlinks since the last scan.
Each linking domain comes with its own Domain Rank (0–100) so you can immediately tell whether a backlink is doing anything for you. A link from a DR-80 site is worth roughly the same as thousands of links from DR-5 sites; the score is logarithmic, not linear. The Top backlinks table is sorted by referring-domain DR descending so the highest-leverage links sit at the top of the page.
How it works
Pulled live from our backlink index at scan time.
Highest-authority backlinks pointing at the domain.
Unique domains linking back, with their domain rank.
Most-used anchor phrases across all backlinks.
Ratio of link-juice-passing vs nofollow links.
Aggregated authority score for each linking domain.
Who uses this
Run a no-signup backlink audit on a prospect's domain before the call. The DR-by-domain table makes the "you have a link diversity problem" conversation concrete in 60 seconds.
Pull a competitor backlink snapshot, drop the URL into a slide, and use it to argue for a digital-PR budget. The shareable URL means stakeholders can verify the data themselves.
Track outreach campaign progress without a Semrush seat. Compare run-to-run history to confirm new partnerships and guest posts are showing up in your backlink index.
Reading your report
KPI strip
Total backlinks, referring domains, dofollow ratio, average DR. The headline numbers stakeholders ask about first.
Top backlinks table
Sorted by referring-domain DR descending. The highest-leverage 50 links live here — these are the ones worth nurturing.
Anchor text distribution
Top 20 anchor phrases. A healthy profile is mostly branded + naked-URL with topical anchors thinned out. Heavy match-anchor usage triggers spam-penalty review.
Lost backlinks
Backlinks that existed in a previous scan and no longer exist. The first place to look when rankings drop without an apparent cause.
What good looks like
Under 20 referring domains
Low DR linkers, mostly nofollow, anchor distribution heavy on exact-match keywords. Either very new, or built primarily through low-quality directory listings. Won't move competitive rankings.
50–200 referring domains
Mix of DR-20 to DR-50 linkers, a couple of higher-DR mentions, mostly natural anchors. Where most established SaaS / SMB sites sit. Enough to compete on long-tail; need more for head terms.
500+ referring domains
Multiple DR-70+ inbound links, healthy dofollow ratio, balanced anchor distribution, low lost-link rate. Site can compete on most non-elite head terms; growth from here is incremental.
We query our internal backlink index at scan time — a multi-billion link database updated continuously from a fleet of crawlers we run, on par with the wholesale data sources most paid SEO platforms (Semrush, Ahrefs, Majestic) draw from.
"Live" here means the snapshot is current as of the scan timestamp. Backlink indexes never represent the absolute total of every link on the web — no commercial index does — but the relative shape of the profile (DR distribution, anchor distribution, dofollow split) is stable enough to make decisions on.
We surface up to 50 backlinks in the headline table, sorted by referring-domain DR. Full referring-domain count is unbounded — every unique linking domain is reported. Anchor text is aggregated from all known backlinks (not just the top 50) and the top 20 by frequency are surfaced.
Lost backlinks compare the current scan against the most recent prior scan of the same domain. A "lost" link could be a true loss (the linking page was deleted or the link removed) or a temporary index gap. Treat individual losses as signal, mass losses as a problem worth investigating.
FAQ
No fixed number. It depends on keyword competitiveness and the quality of the linking domains. A long-tail keyword can rank with under ten quality backlinks; "best CRM software" might need hundreds. Run a backlink check on the top three results to set a realistic floor.
Yes — just not how most people think. Nofollow links don't directly pass ranking signal, but they drive referral traffic, build brand awareness, and contribute to a natural-looking profile. A site whose backlinks are 100% followed looks manipulated. Some nofollow links (Wikipedia, Reddit) are also cited by AI engines.
They can. Links from spammy sites, link farms, or PBNs can trigger algorithmic penalties — Google's SpamBrain and Penguin are trained to detect manipulation. If you suddenly see hundreds of low-quality backlinks pointing in, run them through this checker, identify the worst offenders, and submit them to Google's Disavow Tool. Most natural profiles never need this.
Monthly for most sites. Weekly if you're running an active outreach or PR campaign. Bookmark your report at /bl/<domain>/ — re-running the scan automatically diffs against the prior result, surfacing new links earned and old ones lost. That diff is where the actionable insight lives.
Three paths in order of effort: (1) email the linking webmaster and ask politely — slow but free; (2) if no reply, add the URL to a Google Disavow file (disavow.txt) and submit via Search Console; (3) for entire spammy domains, use the domain: prefix in the disavow file to neutralize every link from that source.
Yes, indirectly. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews use citation signals that overlap heavily with traditional link authority — they cite domains that other authoritative pages link to. A page nobody links to is unlikely to be cited by AI engines. Pair backlink work with mentions in editorial roundups.
Google has to crawl the linking page, recognize the link, and reassess your authority. That cycle typically runs one to four weeks for established sites, up to eight for newer domains. AI engines work on different cycles — citation surfaces can update in days for fast-moving stories or take months for slow corpus refreshes.
No. Paid links violate Google's spam policies, and detection has caught up — SpamBrain looks at unnatural link velocity, anchor patterns, and seller-network footprint. Penalties range from devalued links (best case) to full site demotion (worst). Editorial coverage you earn is slower but compounds. The math favors earned links.
Ahrefs and Semrush run their own backlink crawlers and have their own indexes; we run ours. The relative profile shape (DR distribution, anchor mix) is comparable; absolute counts will differ between any two indexes by 10–30%. For a free, no-signup look at a domain you don't own, this is meaningfully cheaper than a paid seat.
Google Search Console reports backlinks Google itself has discovered and confirmed. Third-party indexes (ours, Ahrefs, Semrush) discover links Google may not have indexed yet, plus links Google saw but doesn't surface in GSC. The two will rarely match.
Yes — the tool works on any public domain. Run a competitor's domain through the checker, then compare anchor text and top referring domains against your own. The biggest backlink-strategy lifts come from filling gaps your competitors have already proven are reachable.
A backlink the index saw on the previous scan and doesn't see on this one. Real-world causes: the linking page was deleted, the page was edited and the link removed, the page now redirects elsewhere, or the page is now blocked from crawlers.
As of 2019, Google treats rel="nofollow", rel="ugc", and rel="sponsored" as hints rather than directives. Some authority does pass — but conservatively. Treat dofollow as the primary ranking-signal column and nofollow as referral-traffic + brand-mention value.
Our backlink index is updated continuously, with the bulk of recently-discovered links appearing within 1–4 weeks. Brand-new outbound links from low-traffic sites can take longer; links from high-traffic publishers usually appear within days.
rel="nofollow" tells search engines not to pass authority through the link. Dofollow (no rel attribute) passes authority.