How to check the backlinks of any website for free

How do you check your own site's backlinks for free?

Use the two free tools from the search engines themselves: the Links report in Google Search Console and the Backlinks tool in Bing Webmaster Tools. Both are free, and both show links the search engine actually found. The catch is that you must verify you own the site before either one shows you anything.

Google Search Console: the Links report

Open Search Console, choose your property and click Links in the left menu. The report has two halves. External links shows your top linked pages, the top sites that link to you and the most common linking text. Internal links shows how your own pages link to each other. Google's Links report help page explains every table.

Three things to know before you trust the numbers:

• It is a sample. Google says the report is not a complete list of every link to your site, and it can still list links that have since been removed.
• It does not show nofollow. You cannot tell followed and nofollow links apart in it.
• It has no history. There is no date range, so export it on a fixed day each month if you want to see change over time.

Our full guide to Search Console backlinks walks through each table, the exports and their row limits, step by step.

Bing Webmaster Tools: Backlinks

Bing Webmaster Tools has its own Backlinks tool, listed in Microsoft's Bing Webmaster Tools overview. It shows the sites and pages Bing found linking to you, with anchor text, and it also lets you look at the link profile of other sites to compare. Bing crawls the web on its own, so it often finds links Google's sample leaves out, and the other way round. That is a good reason to check both.

If you already use Search Console, setting up Bing takes a few minutes, because Bing can import your verified sites. Our Bing Webmaster Tools guide shows how.

How do you check the backlinks of any other website?

Search Console and Bing only show full data for sites you own, so for a competitor, a prospect or a site you are thinking of buying, use a backlink checker that has its own link data. MrKeyword has two free ones, and neither needs a card.

The free backlink checker

Enter any domain in the free backlink checker. Without an account it shows:

• how many websites link to the domain (its referring domains);
• its 20 strongest referring domains, each with its Link Authority score and an example linking page;
• the linking domains it gained or lost between the last two web graph releases;
• a month-by-month chart of linking domains, when MrKeyword has scored the domain in at least two months (see backlink history).

A free account lists up to 500 referring domains, with the anchor text and individual links MrKeyword's crawler has seen. Each link the crawler found is labelled followed, nofollow, sponsored or ugc.

Where the data comes from. Two sources, both run by MrKeyword, and every result names which one found each referring domain:

• The web graph, built from the Common Crawl domain-level web graph. It knows which domains link to which, but not the page, the anchor text or the link attributes. A new release arrives every few months.
• MrKeyword's own crawler, which records individual links on the pages it has fetched. It has visited far fewer pages than the web graph covers.

Both are a sample of the web, not a full index. Pressing the button reads stored data; it does not crawl the site live. So treat the totals as a solid view of who links to a site, not as a complete count.

The free domain authority checker

To compare overall link strength rather than list links, use the free domain authority checker. It checks up to 5 domains at once with no sign-up, or 25 with a free account, and shows each one's Link Authority: MrKeyword's own 0 to 100 score from a PageRank over its link graph. It is not Moz Domain Authority and not Ahrefs Domain Rating. Our guide to what domain authority is explains how those scores differ.

What about paid backlink tools?

Ahrefs, Semrush and Moz each run a large commercial link index and usually find more individual linking pages than free tools, especially on big sites. Ahrefs plans start at $29 a month (Starter), with Lite at $129; Semrush's SEO plan is $139 a month; Moz Pro starts at $49 a month (Starter). These are monthly prices as each vendor lists them, read between 1 November 2026 and 2 November 2026. If you need deep link research every day, one of them is worth it; our Ahrefs pricing, Semrush pricing and Moz Pro pricing guides set out each plan. If you only check links now and then, start with the free tools above.

What should you look for when you check backlinks?

Four things: how many different sites link to you, what kind of links they are, whether any look like spam, and which ones you have lost. A single big number tells you very little on its own.

1. Referring domains, not total links

   Total backlinks counts every link; referring domains counts the different websites they come from. One site with a sitewide footer link can create thousands of backlinks but only one referring domain. A first link from a new, relevant site usually adds more than the hundredth link from a site that already links to you. Our guide to what backlinks are covers what makes a link good.

2. Nofollow, sponsored and ugc

   A link can carry rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored" (paid or sponsored links) or rel="ugc" (comments and forum posts). Google's page on qualifying outbound links says it treats these as hints. These links still send visitors, but do not count on them for rankings.

3. Spammy patterns

   Watch for many links from unrelated or low-quality sites, the same exact keyword used as anchor text again and again, links from pages that exist only to link out, and sudden bursts of links you did not earn. Google's spam policies describe link spam by name. Every site picks up some junk links, and Google says it can usually assess which links to trust without your help, so there is rarely a reason to panic.

4. Lost links

   Links disappear when a page is deleted, redesigned or moved. MrKeyword's checker counts the domains lost between web graph releases. If a site still links to a page of yours that now returns a 404 error, redirect that address to the closest live page with a 301 and the link works again.

Once you know where you stand, our guide on how to increase domain authority covers how to earn more good links, and which tactics Google calls spam.

What does MrKeyword not do?

MrKeyword does not see every link on the web, does not show Google's own list of your links, and does not sell or build links. To be specific:

• Its data is a sample. The web graph is domain-level, and its own crawler has fetched far fewer pages than the big paid indexes, so for large sites its page-level link count is much smaller than its referring-domain count.
• It does not crawl a site live when you press the button. It reads data already stored.
• It does not show Moz DA, Ahrefs DR or Semrush Authority Score. Link Authority is its own score.
• It does not replace Search Console. Only Google can show the links Google found, and only for sites you verify.
• It does not buy, sell or swap links, or send outreach email for you.

For every free tool in one place, see the free SEO tools page.

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