How to check backlinks to any site
·4 min read
To check backlinks to your own site, open the Links report in Google Search Console, which shows the sites, pages and link texts Google has found pointing at you. To check backlinks to any other site, a competitor included, you need a third-party backlinks checker, because only the owner can see Google's data. Expect the two to disagree on totals. Look at referring domains, link text and whether links are followed, and ignore the urge to disavow.
How to check backlinks to your own site in Search Console
Open Search Console, pick your property and choose Links in the menu. The external links section has three tables.
| Table | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Top linked pages | Your pages with the most links from other sites |
| Top linking sites | The root domains linking to you most often |
| Top linking text | The most common link text in links from outside your property |
Click any row to drill down to the sites or exact pages behind it. Export gives you the "Latest links" and "More sample links" lists.
Treat it as a sample. Google's Links report help page says the report "isn't a comprehensive list of every link" on your site. Tables stop at 1,000 rows, a single-table download stops at 1,000 rows, and the full export goes up to 100,000 rows for each of the two link lists. The report also doesn't say whether a link is nofollow, and it keeps links Google found in the past even if they have since been removed.
How to check backlinks to any site
For a site you don't own, use a third-party backlinks checker. These tools run their own crawlers, store the links they find and let anyone look up any domain.
Each one has its own index, so counts differ between them, sometimes by a lot. The reasons are mundane:
- Each crawler visits different parts of the web at different rates.
- Some keep links for months after they vanish, others drop them fast.
- They count differently. One link in a sitewide footer can be one referring domain or 40,000 backlinks.
- Spam filtering differs. Some tools drop obvious link farms, others keep everything.
None of them is Google's view. Third-party link counts are estimates. Compare a site against its competitors inside one tool rather than mixing numbers from two, and never put a competitor's count from one tool next to your Search Console total. Our post on Ahrefs alternatives compares the paid suites if you need full link exports.
What to look at when you check backlinks
Start with referring domains, not total backlinks. Fifty links from one blog's sidebar are one relationship. Ten sites that each link once are ten. When you check a competitor, the referring domains list is your outreach list. Ask who links to them but not to you.
Link text. The anchor text tells you how people describe the site. A healthy profile is mostly the brand name, bare URLs and a mix of natural phrases. A profile where most links say "best cheap running shoes" usually means someone bought or built them.
Followed or not. Links can carry rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored" or rel="ugc". Google's guide to qualifying outbound links asks sites to mark paid links sponsored and links in comments and forum posts ugc. Google treats all three as hints, so a qualified link may count for little in ranking. It still sends visitors. A competitor whose links are mostly sponsored has bought its visibility. Our post on nofollow links covers what each value does.
Lost links. When a strong site stops linking to you, find out why. The page moved, the article was updated, or the link now points at a 404 on your side. A redirect or a short email fixes most of these. Search Console won't flag lost links, so recheck your top linking sites every few months.
What not to worry about
Don't disavow links because a tool gave them a bad score. Google's disavow links help page says "most sites will not need to use this tool" and that in most cases Google can assess which links to trust without guidance. It reserves disavowing for sites with many spammy or artificial links that have caused, or will likely cause, a manual action. If you haven't bought links and have no manual action in Search Console, leave the disavow file alone.
Don't chase a third-party authority score either. It is the vendor's model, not Google's, and it moves when the vendor changes its formula.
Random scraper sites linking to you are normal. Every site that ranks collects them, and the disavow guidance above covers them too.
Check who links to any site with Backlink Finder
Our Backlink Finder takes any domain, yours or a competitor's, and lists the 100 strongest sites linking to it, strongest first. For each site you get a link rank from 0 to 1,000, its number of links, the date its first link was seen, a spam score out of 100 and the share of its linking pages that aren't marked nofollow. Sites scoring 40 or more are marked likely spam, and the report warns you when a large share of the listed sites look spammy. It also shows the 50 link texts those strongest sites use, grouped as brand name, web address, generic words, no text or other words, plus the total number of sites linking in.
It covers the whole domain, not one page, and it doesn't list every link or tell you which links Google counts. The counts and scores come from our backlink data and are estimates. It doesn't read Search Console, so use the Links report for your own site's view. A run costs 70 credits, and a run that finds no linking sites and no link texts is refunded.