Free tool
Who links to your site?
Type in your website. See what other sites link to it and how much Google trusts it. You can add and compare against a competitor here, too.
How the check works
- 01
We look the domain up in a live backlink index
No crawl of your site, no tag to install, no account. The lookup runs against a continuously refreshed third-party index of the web’s links — the same class of data the paid suites resell.
- 02
We pull the summary
Domain rank on a 0–100 scale, total backlinks, referring domains, the dofollow/nofollow split and a spam score. Totals come from the whole index, not just the rows we show.
- 03
We show the top 100 links, one per referring domain
Strongest linking domains first. One row per domain on purpose: a single site’s footer link repeated across 4,000 pages is one relationship, not 4,000, and it should not eat the whole table.
- 04
If you added a competitor, we diff the two lists
The sites in their top 100 that are not in yours. It is a comparison of two top lists, not two full profiles — we say so on the result — but it is enough to see where they are being talked about and you are not.
What each number means
Domain rank (0–100)
A logarithmic estimate of how much link equity flows into the domain, on the same kind of scale as Ahrefs' DR or Moz's DA. Logarithmic means moving from 10 to 20 is easy and 60 to 70 is very hard. It is a proxy for “how much does the web vouch for this site”, and it is a rough one — a good number to compare against competitors, a bad number to optimise for its own sake.
Backlinks vs referring domains
Backlinks counts every link; referring domains counts every site that links. A site with 40,000 backlinks from 30 domains has 30 relationships and probably one sitewide footer. Referring domains is the number that tracks with rankings, which is why it is the headline figure here and why the table shows one link per domain.
Dofollow share
The proportion of links that pass authority. Nofollow, sponsored and UGC links are still real mentions — and they still matter for AI assistants and referral traffic — but they do not carry the same weight in Google's link graph. A very high nofollow share usually means most links come from comments, forums or profiles.
Spam score
How much of the linking neighbourhood looks manipulative — link farms, hacked pages, spun content. Low is normal. A high score does not mean you did anything wrong (spam sites link to everyone), but if it is high and your dofollow share is high, it is worth looking at who those links are from.
Why totals differ between tools
Each tool crawls a different slice of the web at a different cadence and prunes dead links on a different schedule. Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz and this page will each give you a different total for the same domain, and none of them is Google's number, which is not published. Compare domains within one tool; do not compare one domain across tools.
How to use it for competitor research
The most useful thing a backlink checker does is not tell you about your own site — you already know roughly who links to you. It is showing you the sites that link to the competitor who outranks you. Those sites have already demonstrated that they write about your category and link out; they are the warmest possible outreach list.
Start with the competitor closest to your size, not the category leader. A comparison against a domain with 20,000 referring domains produces a gap list you cannot act on; a comparison against one with 300 produces a list of specific pages — a roundup, a directory, a partner page, a podcast's show notes — each of which is a pitch you can write this week. Run the check, sort the gap by rank, and look for patterns: if five of their top links are “best X tools” listicles, that is your first campaign.
From there the work is deciding who to contact and what to say, which is what our competitor backlink analysis automates: the same gap, scored by how much each link would move you, with the author and a drafted note. If you would rather do it by hand, here is the manual process.
Does Google have a backlink checker?
Yes, with one large caveat: it only works for sites you own. Google Search Console's Links report lists your top linking sites, top linked pages and most common anchor text, straight from Google's own index. It is the most authoritative view of your own profile you can get, and it is free.
What it will not do is show you a competitor's links, give you a rank or authority score, tell you which links are dofollow, or export more than a sample. That is the gap third-party checkers — this one included — exist to fill. Use Search Console for the truth about you, and a checker like this for everyone else.
Questions about the checker
- How do I check backlinks for free?
- Type a domain into the box above. You get the domain rank, total backlinks, referring domains, dofollow share, spam score and the top 100 links — no account and no email for your first check. A second check asks for an email because every lookup costs us money in index fees; there is still no card and no trial clock.
- Can I check a competitor's backlinks?
- Yes — any public domain, not just your own. Click "Compare with a competitor" to check two at once: you get both profiles side by side and a list of the sites that link to them and not to you, which is the beginning of a link-building list.
- Why don't the numbers match Ahrefs or Semrush?
- Every backlink tool runs its own crawler and its own index, and they all disagree with each other by a wide margin. Ours draws on a live third-party index that is refreshed continuously. Treat the counts as an order of magnitude and the referring-domain list as the useful part; the exact total is a fact about the index, not about the web.
- How long does it take for a new backlink to show up?
- Days to a few weeks, depending on how often the linking page is crawled. Big sites and popular pages get picked up quickly; a small blog can take longer. Results here are cached for 24 hours per domain, so a link that landed this morning may not appear until tomorrow.
- Is there a limit on how many checks I can run?
- Your first check is free with no signup. After that you can keep going with an email address, within a fair per-hour limit and a daily ceiling on what the tool spends across everyone. If you hit the ceiling, try again tomorrow — or open a free Sightivo account, which does not share it.
- Do you store my domain?
- We store the domain and the result for 24 hours so a shared link shows the same numbers instead of running the lookup again, and we keep an email if you give us one for a second run. Your IP address is stored only as a hash for rate limiting. Nothing goes on a mailing list.
- Can I export the results?
- Yes. The "Download CSV" button gives you the top 100 links with source URL, source domain, page title, anchor text, target URL, follow attribute, domain rank and first-seen date — the columns you would want in a spreadsheet.
- What is a good number of referring domains for a startup?
- There is no universal number, but for a seed-stage SaaS site, under 50 referring domains means you are largely invisible to Google for anything competitive; 50–200 is where pages start ranking for long-tail terms; a few hundred quality domains is where you can compete for real commercial keywords. What matters more than the count is who is linking — ten relevant industry sites beat two hundred directories.
- Does it show lost links?
- Not in the free check — it shows live links only, as a snapshot. Tracking new and lost links over time is one of the things a free Sightivo account adds: the same profile is re-checked on a schedule and changes arrive as notifications.
- What does a free Sightivo account add?
- The free check tells you where you stand. An account watches the whole profile for new and lost links, turns the sites that link to your competitors into a ranked list of opportunities, and gives you the author or editor to contact and a drafted pitch for each one. You approve everything that goes out; nothing is sent for you.