Check Incoming Links to a Website

Incoming links, the ones pointing at your site from other domains, are one of the strongest signals search engines use to judge trust. But you can only build on what you can see. This guide explains how to check the incoming links to any website, how to read what a backlink report tells you, and how to act on the good, the broken, and the toxic links it surfaces.

What "incoming links" actually are

An incoming link, also called a backlink or inbound link, is a hyperlink on someone else's website that points to yours. Each one is a small vote of confidence. Search engines weigh both the number of linking domains and their quality, so ten links from ten respected sites usually count for far more than a hundred links from one low-value directory. The anchor text, the linking page's topic, and whether the link is marked nofollow all shape how much value passes through.

Checking your incoming links answers three practical questions: who is talking about you, which of those links are helping, and whether anything toxic is putting your site at risk.

How to check incoming links to a website

There is no single database of every link on the web, so different tools show different numbers. Use more than one and combine the picture.

• Google Search Console (your own site): the Links report lists your top linking sites, most linked pages, and most common anchor text, drawn from Google's own index. This is the free source of truth for a site you own.
• Bing Webmaster Tools: free, with its own inbound-links report that often surfaces links Google has not emphasized.
• Free tiers of Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz: their free backlink checkers show a capped sample of referring domains for any URL, including competitors. Counts are estimates from each vendor's crawl.

For a step-by-step on interpreting a third-party backlink report, our backlinks checker guide walks through each column.

How to read the report

A backlink report can list thousands of rows. Focus on the columns that tell you about quality and health rather than raw volume.

• Referring domains: the number of unique sites linking to you. This matters far more than total link count, which one site can inflate.
• Authority metric: vendors label this Domain Rating, Domain Authority, or similar. It is that vendor's estimate of a domain's strength, not a Google number.
• Anchor text: the clickable words. A natural profile is mostly branded and descriptive, not stuffed with exact-match money keywords.
• Link status: whether the link is live, and whether it is followed or nofollow.
• Target URL: which of your pages receives the link. Concentrated links to key pages are a strong signal.

Our inbound link checker guide covers how these metrics differ between tools so you do not misread a low number as a penalty.

Fixing broken incoming links

The fastest wins hide in your existing link profile: valuable links that point at pages that no longer exist. When a linking site sends visitors to a URL that returns 404, both the traffic and the link value leak away.

1. In your backlink report or Search Console, find inbound links whose target URL returns a 404.
2. If the linked page moved, add a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one so the link value transfers.
3. If the page is gone for good and has no replacement, decide between recreating equivalent content or letting it 410.
4. Where the linking site simply used a wrong or outdated URL, email them a polite correction. Many will fix it.

Because broken inbound links overlap with your own broken outbound and internal links, it is worth running a full sweep with a crawler. See our broken link checker guide for the process.

Earning more quality incoming links

Once you can see your profile, the next job is to grow it deliberately. The tactics that survive algorithm updates all share one trait: they give the linking site a real reason to link.

• Create link-worthy assets: original data, tools, definitive guides, and templates earn links because people cite them.
• Reclaim unlinked mentions: find sites that name your brand without linking, and ask for the link.
• Guest contributions: write genuinely useful articles for relevant publications in your field.
• Digital PR: pitch newsworthy findings to journalists and industry sites.

Avoid buying links, link farms, and mass directory submissions. They violate Google's spam policies and can trigger a manual action. For a durable approach, our link building guide lays out white-hat tactics in order of effort and payoff.

Handling toxic incoming links

Not every link helps. Spammy links from hacked sites, link networks, or irrelevant foreign-language directories can accumulate on their own. The good news is that Google is generally good at ignoring obvious spam, so most sites never need to intervene.

If you do need to act, export the offending domains, format them as a disavow file, and submit it in Search Console. Then keep monitoring, because a one-time cleanup rarely settles the issue permanently.

Building a monitoring routine

Incoming links change constantly as pages get published, edited, and deleted across the web. A quarterly review is enough for most sites: check for new referring domains, confirm your best links are still live, and scan for any sudden spike in low-quality links. Pair that with Search Console alerts so a manual action never catches you by surprise. Consistent, light monitoring beats an annual panic audit every time.

Frequently asked questions

How do I check incoming links to my website for free?

Use Google Search Console's Links report, which is free for any verified site owner and draws on Google's own index. Add Bing Webmaster Tools and the free tier of a third-party backlink checker to widen the picture, since no single tool sees every link.

Why do different tools show different backlink counts?

Each tool reports from its own web crawl, and no crawler covers the entire internet. One may have discovered links another missed, and vendors also define "link" and "referring domain" slightly differently. Compare trends within a single tool rather than comparing absolute numbers across tools.

Can I see the incoming links to a competitor's site?

Yes, partially. You cannot access their Search Console, but paste their domain into a free backlink checker and you will see the referring domains that vendor's crawler found. That reveals the content and sites earning them links, which is useful for your own outreach.

Do incoming links still matter for SEO?

Yes. Links remain one of the strongest ranking signals, but quality and relevance now outweigh raw quantity. A handful of links from trusted, topically related sites will do more than large volumes of low-value links.

Should I disavow bad incoming links?

Usually not. Google ignores most spam automatically, so the disavow tool is reserved for cases with a manual action for unnatural links or a clear negative SEO attack. Disavowing good links by mistake removes value, so use it cautiously.