Free Backlink Checker: Check the Backlinks of Any Website

How to check backlinks of any website

1. Type the domain into the box above, such as example.com. A full URL works too: the checker reads the whole domain, subdomains included.
2. Press Check Backlinks. The live data needs a free account, and the line under the button shows how many runs are free and what a run costs after that.
3. Read the summary tiles first: backlinks, referring domains, referring IPs and subnets, followed and nofollow links, and the link rank.
4. Scroll to the tables of link types, top-level domains, countries and kinds of linking sites, and the top anchor texts when the index carries them.
5. Finish with "What the numbers mean", a plain-language reading written from your own figures, then run the same check on two or three competitors.

How to read the result: a worked example

The figures below are made up for a fictional site, example.com, to show the arithmetic. They are not data for any real domain; run the checker above to see the real numbers for yours.

Reading the example as a whole: example.com earns its links from many separate sites on many separate servers, with a normal share of nofollow links and the brand as the top anchor. Nothing there looks built. Its next step is more referring domains, not more links from sites that already link, and the twelve broken backlinks are quick wins. Your own result ends with the same kind of reading, written from your real numbers.

Competitor backlink checker: find the gap

Run the same check on the three sites ranking above you for your main keyword. The gap in referring domains tells you how much link building stands between you and them, and the kinds of sites linking to them, such as directories, industry blogs, resource pages and news, are your prospect list.

Then turn that list into a plan. The Backlink Opportunity Finder gives you an ordered list of legitimate link sources for your niche, business type and country, and the Domain Authority Checker tells you whether a prospect has real authority before you spend time pitching it.

Dofollow vs nofollow backlinks

A dofollow link is an ordinary link with no rel attribute, and search engines may treat it as a vote for the page it points to. A nofollow link carries rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored" or rel="ugc", which asks search engines not to pass that credit. Google treats these attributes as hints rather than commands, but such links still carry far less weight.

Nofollow links are normal on social profiles, forums, directories and comments, and they do not hurt a site. A profile that is mostly nofollow usually means the links came from profiles and directories rather than editorial mentions. Because Google asks for paid links to be marked rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow", a healthy profile always contains some nofollow links. For places that still give followed links, see our list of 1000+ dofollow backlink sites, grouped by type.

Referring domains vs total backlinks, and what anchor text tells you

The referring domain count matters far more than the backlink total. A thousand backlinks from one website, usually a sitewide footer, sidebar or blogroll, carry roughly the weight of a single endorsement, while fifty links from fifty relevant websites are fifty endorsements. Divide backlinks by referring domains: a ratio near 1 means links spread across many sites, a ratio in the dozens means sitewide links.

Anchor text is the other thing to read. In a natural profile the biggest anchors are the brand name, the bare domain and plain words such as "website" or "here", with exact-match keywords a small minority. When your money keyword is the top anchor, that is the pattern Google's link spam systems look for, and the safe fix is to earn new links with brand and descriptive anchors. Automated lookup-page links, the kind old backlink generators made, add backlinks without adding endorsements; our Backlink Maker says plainly what they are worth.

Free backlink checkers compared

Every link index runs its own crawler and finds a different share of the web, so no free tool, ours included, shows every link, and no two tools report the same counts. This is how the common free options work at the time of writing (November 2026). Free plans change often, so confirm the current limits on each vendor's own page.

Which to use: for your own site, start with the Links report in Search Console, because it is Google's own data. For competitors, pick one tool and stay with it, because numbers from different indexes cannot be compared. This checker is built for that quick comparison, with a plain-language reading of the numbers; for a page-by-page export of every link, use a paid index. If you would rather hand the work over, our SEO service runs the competitor gap analysis and monthly white-hat outreach, and reports every link earned.

Backlink tracker and backlink analyzer: how often to check

Check your own domain monthly, and two to four weeks after any outreach campaign, to see which new links the index has found and whether old ones were lost. New links take days or weeks to be discovered, so daily checks show mostly noise. Note the referring domains, the dofollow share and the top anchors each time, and compare month with month.

A sudden jump in backlinks from a country or top-level domain you do not sell in is the usual first sign of spam links pointed at you. Google normally ignores those on its own; a disavow file is only worth filing for links you built or bought, or after a manual action. For automated alerts and the full history of every link, you need a paid index.