Reading backlink data
Referring domains, authority, new and lost links, filters and live re-checks.
- Lesson
- 5/6
- Reading time
- 7 min
- Sections
- 4
- Through the course
- 83%
Backlinks shows who links to the website picked in the header switcher. Data comes from monthly web crawl data and updates once a month; the page says which month.
What the numbers mean
- Referring domains come from the domain-level link graph built from the last three monthly crawls: the most complete part of the data.
- Individual links (page, anchor, rel, target) come from those domains' pages in the latest crawl; large sites are sampled.
- Authority (0–100) is our own measure based on how well connected a domain is in the link graph.
- No crawl covers the whole web: blocked, logged-in and very new pages won't appear.
New and lost
After each update a domain is new if it wasn't linking before and lost if it no longer appears. You're notified of new and lost referring domains after each update (except the initial import).
Live re-checks
Re-check a link and we load the linking page live to confirm it, update its anchor and rel, or mark it lost. The oldest links are also re-checked hourly within half of the daily allowance.
Lesson 5 of 6
Reading backlink data