How to Check Backlinks of Any Website for Free (Yours or a Competitor's)

There are three free ways to check the backlinks of a website. For a site you own, use the Links report in Google Search Console, because it is Google's own data. For a competitor, or for a quick whole-domain picture of any site, use a backlink checker such as ours. For a second opinion on either, Bing Webmaster Tools shows link data for your site and for sites you do not own.

This guide walks through each method step by step, compares the free options in one table, explains how to read the numbers, and ends with the thing most guides get wrong: when a disavow file helps and when it only does harm.

What a Backlink Check Actually Shows You

A backlink is a link from a page on another website to a page on yours. A backlink check counts those links and sorts them in the ways that matter for search. Five numbers do most of the work:

• Backlinks: every link from another site, counted one by one. A single site can link thousands of times from a footer, so this number on its own says little.
• Referring domains: the number of different websites linking. This is the figure to compare with competitors and the one to grow. Fifty links from fifty relevant sites are fifty endorsements; a thousand links from one site are one.
• Followed, nofollow, sponsored and UGC: a plain link may pass ranking credit. Links marked rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored" or rel="ugc" ask search engines not to pass it. Google's documentation says links with these attributes "will generally not be followed", and asks site owners to mark paid placements with the sponsored value.
• Anchor text: the clickable words. In a natural profile the top anchors are the brand name, the bare domain and plain words such as "website" or "here". An exact-match money keyword at the top of the list is the pattern Google's spam systems look for.
• Authority scores: Domain Rating at Ahrefs, Authority Score at Semrush, Domain Authority at Moz, a 0 to 1000 link rank in our checker. None is a Google number, and scores from different tools cannot be compared.

Keep it in proportion: in April 2024 Google's Gary Illyes told a search conference in Bulgaria that "we need very few links to rank pages" and that "over the years we've made links less important", as reported by Search Engine Journal. A month earlier Google had removed the word "important" from the sentence in its spam policies that describes links as a ranking factor. Links still matter, especially for a new site, but a backlink check is a diagnostic, not a scoreboard.

Method 1: Google Search Console, for Your Own Site

If you own the site, start here. The Links report shows a sample of what Google itself has found, which is the only link data that comes from the search engine you are trying to rank in. It costs nothing and needs no third-party index.

1. Open Search Console and pick the property. If the site is not verified yet, add it as a Domain property so every subdomain and protocol is covered.
2. In the left menu, open Links. The page is split into External links and Internal links.
3. Under External links, read Top linked pages (your pages with the most backlinks), Top linking sites (root domains sorted by link count) and Top linking text (the most common anchors). Click any row to drill down to the individual linking sites and pages.
4. Use the Export external links button at the top right. Google provides up to 100,000 rows in two slices: "Latest links", the most recently discovered links sorted by date, and "More sample links", a wider sample for sites with more than 100,000 linking pages. The on-page tables stop at 1,000 rows.

Two limits to know. Google says the report "isn't a comprehensive list of every link on your site" and shows a sample; and the report does not say whether a link is nofollow, so you cannot read the followed share from it. For those two things you need a third-party checker. For everything else about your own site, this report is the reference.

Method 2: Our Free Backlink Checker, for Any Domain

The SEO SMO HUB Backlink Checker reports the live links to any domain, subdomains included, from a commercial link index. It is free with an account, because every lookup is a paid query to that index; the line under the button shows how many runs are free and what a run costs after that. A domain's data is cached on our server for up to seven days, so a repeat check in the same week shows the same figures.

1. Type the domain, such as example.com. A full URL works too; the checker reads the whole domain.
2. Press Check Backlinks. Log in or create the free account when asked.
3. Read the summary tiles first: Backlinks, Referring domains, Referring IPs, Referring subnets, Followed links, Nofollow links and Link rank (0 to 1000). Referring IPs and subnets tell you how many separate servers the linking sites use; far fewer IPs than domains can mean one owner behind many sites.
4. Read the History and health block: Referring pages, the date the index first saw a link, the date it marked links as lost when there is one, Broken backlinks (links to pages on the domain that now return an error) and, when the index gives it, a Backlink spam score from 0 to 100.
5. Scroll to the tables: link types (text, image, redirect), the top-level domains and countries the links come from, the kinds of linking sites, the link attributes, and the top anchor texts when the index carries them.
6. Finish with What the numbers mean, a plain-language reading written from the figures you just saw, including the links-per-domain ratio and the nofollow share.

What it does not do: it does not list every linking URL, and it does not track new and lost links over time; for a page-by-page export you need a paid index. Our Domain Authority Checker turns the same referring-domain data into a score you can compare across sites, on the same account.

Method 3: Checking a Competitor's Backlinks, and Using the List

Run the checker on the three sites that rank above you for your main keyword, exactly as you ran it on your own. The gap in referring domains, measured with the same tool, is the amount of link building between you and them. The kinds of linking sites and the countries they come from are your prospect list: industry directories, resource pages and news in the market you sell in. A profile led by money-keyword anchors was built, not earned, and is not a model to copy.

Bing Webmaster Tools gives a free second view. Its Backlinks section shows your links by domain, page and anchor text, and the "Similar sites" tab compares your profile against any site you enter, without owning or verifying that site, as Search Engine Land and Search Engine Roundtable reported when the feature launched in June 2020. Bing's index is not Google's, but it is free and it is a search engine's own data.

Turn the gap into a plan rather than a copy. The Backlink Opportunity Finder gives an ordered list of legitimate link sources for your niche, business type and country, with the risk of each. For the list-based work, start with the dofollow backlink sites we check by hand and the profile creation sites worth your time, and run every candidate through the five-point audit before you submit anywhere.

Free Backlink Checkers Compared

Every index runs its own crawler and finds a different share of the web, so no free tool shows every link and no two tools agree on a count. This is how the common free options stood in November 2026. Free allowances change often; confirm the current limit on each vendor's own page.

Which to pick: Search Console for your own site, always. For competitors, choose one third-party index and stay with it, so the numbers you compare come from the same crawl. Use a second tool only to confirm a surprise, never to average the figures.

How to Read the Results

Whichever tool you used, watch for these signs.

• Links per referring domain. Divide backlinks by referring domains. One to five is the healthy spread. Dozens per domain means sitewide footer or sidebar links, which Google's spam policy lists as "widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites".
• A sudden spike. Hundreds of new links in days from sites you never contacted is an automated program or scraper copies. Google says its systems ignore most of this on their own.
• The same anchor everywhere. One exact keyword dominating the anchor list means the links were built. Earn the next hundred with brand and descriptive anchors.
• Countries and TLDs you do not sell in. A Jaipur business with most of its links from .ru or .xyz domains has spam links, not reach. They are rarely harmful and rarely worth a disavow.
• Referring IPs far below referring domains. Many "different" sites on a handful of servers can be one network.
• Broken backlinks. A 301 redirect from the dead address to the closest live page wins that value back, the cheapest link building there is. Our guide to reading a backlink profile goes deeper on each of these.

What we see in our own data: between June 2025 and October 2026, our backlink checker page alone was shown in Google results about 602,000 times, 37 percent of every impression the whole site received in those sixteen months, according to our Search Console export. People check backlinks far more often than they build them. The check is the easy part; acting on it is the work.

When to Disavow, and When Not To

The disavow tool asks Google to ignore specific links to your site. Google's own help page calls it "an advanced feature" that "should only be used with caution", warns that misuse "can potentially harm your site's performance in Google Search results", and says most sites will not need it because Google can usually judge which links to trust on its own.

Google gives two conditions, and both must apply: you have "a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site", and those links have caused, or are likely to cause, a manual action. Paid links and link schemes are the typical trigger. If you bought a package of the kind described in our note on buying 1,000 cheap dofollow backlinks, that is the case the tool exists for. A spike of random spam links you never asked for is not.

If you do need it: ask for removal at the source first; list one URL or domain per line, using the domain: prefix to cover a whole domain; keep the file to plain text, under 100,000 lines and 2 MB; and expect it to take "a few weeks" to be reflected, because Google has to recrawl the affected pages. Keep a copy of the file and a note of why each domain is in it.

A Note on Cost for Indian Businesses

The paid tools are priced in dollars. In November 2026 Ahrefs lists Lite at USD 129 a month and Starter at USD 29; the Semrush SEO plan is USD 139 a month. At about 94.6 rupees to the dollar on 5 November 2026, that is roughly INR 12,200 a month for Ahrefs Lite, INR 2,700 for Ahrefs Starter and INR 13,100 for Semrush, before tax. An agency checking dozens of domains a week gets its money back from one paid index. A single business that needs a monthly check of its own site and three competitors is covered by Search Console plus a free checker, and the money is better spent on earning links than on counting them.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I check the backlinks of my own website for free?

Open Google Search Console, choose the property and click Links. Top linking sites, top linked pages and top linking text show what Google has found, and the export gives up to 100,000 rows. For the followed and nofollow split, which Search Console does not show, run the same domain through a free backlink checker.

How do I check a competitor's backlinks?

Enter their domain in a third-party checker such as ours, Ahrefs' free checker or Semrush, or add it under Similar sites in Bing Webmaster Tools. Compare referring domains, not raw backlinks, and look at the kinds of sites linking to them. Those sites already link to a business like yours, which makes them your best outreach list.

Why do different tools show different backlink counts?

Each tool runs its own crawler, finds a different share of the web and drops dead links on its own schedule, and Search Console shows only a sample of what Google knows. Treat every count as a large sample. Compare sites with one tool, and compare a site with itself over time using the same tool.

Is a backlink checker the same as a backlink audit?

No. A checker reports the numbers. An audit reads them: the links-per-domain ratio, the anchor mix, the countries and TLDs, the broken links and the spam share, then decides what to redirect, what to earn next and, rarely, what to disavow. The reading at the bottom of our checker's report is a first pass at that audit.

How many backlinks does a website need?

There is no fixed number. The useful comparison is referring domains against the sites ranking above you for the same query, measured with the same tool. Google's Gary Illyes said in 2024 that Google needs "very few links" to rank pages, so close the gap with relevant sites rather than chasing a total.

Should I disavow spam links pointing at my site?

Usually not. Google says the tool is for sites with a considerable number of spammy or paid links that have caused or will likely cause a manual action, and that misuse can harm your rankings. Random spam you never asked for is ignored by Google's systems. Disavow links you built or bought, or after a manual action, and nothing else.

Sources

• Google Search Console Help, Links report (accessed November 2026): report sections, 1,000-row tables, 100,000-row exports, sampling caveats, no nofollow flag.
• Google Search Console Help, Disavow links to your site (accessed November 2026): warnings, conditions for use, file format, timing.
• Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search (accessed November 2026): link spam examples, sponsored and nofollow exception.
• Google Search Central, Qualify your outbound links to Google (accessed November 2026): rel="sponsored", rel="ugc", rel="nofollow".
• Search Engine Journal, Google: We Need Very Few Links To Rank Pages (22 April 2024): Gary Illyes' remark and the March 2024 spam policy wording change.
• Search Engine Land, Links are not a top 3 Google Search ranking factor, says Gary Illyes (September 2023).
• Search Engine Land, Bing Webmaster Tools now gives you competitive link data and Search Engine Roundtable, Bing Webmaster Tools link tool lets you compare link profiles (June 2020).
• Ahrefs, Free Backlink Checker and Pricing (accessed November 2026).
• Semrush, Subscription plans comparison and Prices (accessed November 2026).
• Moz, Link Explorer (free allowance as stated on the page).
• SEO SMO HUB, Google Search Console export for seosmohub.com, 10 June 2025 to 3 October 2026 (first-party data; page and query impressions).
• Exchange rate: open.er-api.com, USD to INR, 5 November 2026.