Free Backlink Checker
See every domain we know of that links to a website, sorted by how much authority it carries. Works for your site or anyone else's.
What counts as a backlink here
We report referring domains, not raw link counts. If a site links to you from four hundred pages, that is one referring domain. This is deliberate: for judging a link profile, four hundred links from one blog are worth far less than four links from four different publications.
The honest limitations
- No anchor text yet. Our index is domain-level, so it tells you a site links to you but not from which page or with what anchor.
- Refreshed per crawl, not hourly. Common Crawl publishes every few months. A link built last week may not appear yet.
- Coverage is broad, not exhaustive. Common Crawl samples the web widely but does not fetch every page of every site.
If those limits matter for your work, a paid crawler-backed tool is the right choice and we'd rather say so than oversell. For understanding a link profile's shape and strength, this is enough — and it is free.
How to read your backlink report
Read the report top down, in this order. Referring domains first — the count of unique sites linking to you is the number that tracks trust; total backlinks can be inflated a hundredfold by a single sitewide footer link. Then the authority spread — a handful of links from strong, relevant sites beats hundreds from weak ones, so look at where your links sit on the DR scale rather than how tall the bar is. Then the anchors — a natural profile is mostly your brand name and bare URLs; if commercial phrases dominate, the profile looks bought whether or not it was.
What to actually do with it
- Compare before you judge. Run two or three competitors through the same check. “40 referring domains” means nothing until you know they have 400 — or 12.
- Find the gap, not the total. The sites linking to your competitors but not to you have already proven they link out in your niche. Our link intersect tool lists them.
- Protect what you have. Links break when pages move. A link pointing at a 404 on your own site passes nothing — fix the redirect and you recover it for free.
- Do not panic about spam. Google ignores most junk links automatically. Only review them seriously after a manual action; the toxic link check shows what would be worth disavowing.
How often should you check?
Monthly is enough for most sites. Link profiles move slowly, and the index behind any backlink tool refreshes on its own schedule, so checking weekly mostly shows you crawl noise rather than real change. Check straight away in two situations: after a migration or redesign, when links can silently break, and after a ranking drop, when you want to know whether you lost links or lost relevance.
Frequently asked questions
How many backlinks do I need?
No fixed number — the median linked site has just two referring domains. Quality beats count: what makes a good backlink →
Backlinks vs referring domains?
A backlink is one link; a referring domain is a unique site. The difference, explained →
How do I find new backlink opportunities?
Target sites linking to competitors but not you — the link intersect tool finds them.