FREE BACKLINK CHECK / ONE A MONTH PER DOMAIN
How many of the sites linking to you fail the rules?
A bad link profile is a manual action waiting to happen — a package a past agency bought, a link network, a burst of spam another company pointed at you — and a manual action takes months to lift. This reads every site the index finds linking to your domain by the same written rules as our backlink audit and tells you, in ten to twenty seconds, how many fail them, why, and what to do this week. No sign-up, and the result is yours whether you hire us or not.
The check / Every link, read by the rules · One a month per domain
Your domain. Every site linking to it, read by the rules.
Type your domain. Every site the index finds linking to it is read by the same written rules as our backlink audit — spam patterns, pages that link out to hundreds of sites, sitewide commercial anchors, bursts born the same week — and you get the count — how many fail outright, how many are borderline — with the reasons and five examples. Free, no sign-up. The result is on this page in under a minute.
Takes ten to twenty seconds. Every site the index finds linking to yours, read by the audit’s rules. One check a month per domain.
Reading the link index…
Why domains were flagged
The shapes, and the top tier
What it reads / The rules
The same rules as the audit, printed here.
Each linking domain is scored by rules that carry a weight. A decisive rule — the kind no honest link trips — or a total of six means the domain fails outright; three to five means it is borderline, decided one by one. Nofollow, sponsored and UGC links pass nothing and are counted as such. Directories, platforms and the local paper are never flagged.
Spam patterns
Gambling, pharmacy, adult and link-seller phrases in the anchor or the page title; an anchor in a script the site does not serve; a page in another language; a domain ending the spam networks favor.
Link-seller pages
Pages that link out to a hundred sites, or three hundred — scraper directories and link-seller lists that exist only to sell or scrape links. Every business collects some; the count says how many.
Bought-link shapes
A sitewide footer or sidebar link carrying a commercial anchor across dozens of pages; a run of new domains born the same week with the same non-brand anchor — the shape of a package, or of a burst aimed at you.
Hosting patterns
Several linking domains on one IP or one subnet — the footprint of a link network — and links that arrive through a redirect, which is how an old domain’s history gets pointed at a site.
The index’s own score
The index’s spam estimate for the linking domain, used as one input among the rules: decisive at the top of its range, a reason for a second look in the middle, never the verdict on its own.
What is never flagged
Yelp, the BBB, Angi, Facebook, the local paper, the chamber — directories, platforms and media are never on the list, and a real link never goes on a disavow file because a rule fired. That is why the audit reads every line by hand.
Honest about the limits
What a count cannot tell you.
The check reads one link per domain, on one day, from one index, and it reads by rules — so it can flag a real link and miss a clever one. It tells you how big the job is and what shape it takes. It cannot tell you which links to keep, which to ask removed and which to disavow; that is a reading by hand, with Search Console open, and it is what the backlink audit is. Nothing here should be disavowed on the strength of a count.
FAQ / Answers
Common questions about the check
What does the free backlink check actually do?
It asks a live backlink index for every site linking to your domain — the referring domains, one representative link from each with its anchor, its page and its dates, and the links you have lost — and reads each one by the same written rules our backlink audit uses: spam patterns in the anchor or the page title, pages that link out to hundreds of sites, sitewide links with a commercial anchor, links that arrive through a redirect, domains sharing a host, a run of new domains born the same week with the same anchor. You get the count — how many fail outright, how many are borderline — with the reasons, five examples of the ones that fail outright, the links pointing at pages of yours that no longer exist, and what was lost in the last ninety days.
Is it really free, and is there a limit?
Free, one check a month per domain, and all it asks for is the domain. The result is yours whether you hire us or not, with a PDF. If you want it read by a person, leave a name and an email under the result and Michael writes back with what to do this week — no newsletter, no reselling, no call unless you ask for one.
What do “fail outright” and “borderline” mean?
Fail outright: a decisive rule fired — spam vocabulary in the anchor or the page title, a page that links out to hundreds of sites, a sitewide commercial anchor, a run of domains born the same week with the same anchor. No honest link has those, so the domain is decided. Borderline: none of the decisive rules, but softer signals added up — the index’s middling spam score, shared hosting with other linking domains, a foreign-language page, an abused domain ending — and the domain is decided one by one, by a person. Many profiles have nothing borderline at all: the links are either a link-seller’s scraper pages or real, with nothing in between.
Why do I get a count and five examples, not the whole list?
Because the whole list is the audit, and it is read by hand. A rule can flag a real link — a small local site on shared hosting, a page that happens to link out a lot — and Google’s caution about the disavow tool is exactly that: misuse can harm a site. The check tells you how big the job is and what shape it takes; the audit reads every line, protects the real links, and pairs every flagged one with its action.
It flagged a lot of domains. What do I do first?
This week, in this order: open Search Console → Security & Manual Actions, so you know whether you are preventing an action or lifting one; send removal requests to every site that fails outright where a person can act, and log the date; write the disavow file by domain for what stays up and upload it on your own decision with that report open; file a reconsideration request with the log attached if there is a manual action. Then redirect the links to dead pages, ask the lost links back, and watch new domains by month. Our audit does all of it, the same week.
Nothing fails outright. Am I done?
No — a first pass by rules is a first pass, and the work runs the other way too. The links pointing at pages that no longer exist are authority leaking today; a redirect returns it. The valuable links you have lost can be asked back. And the links a local business actually needs are few and earned once — the local paper, a supplier’s installer list, the chamber, a directory that checks licenses — which is part of the SEO layer. Keep the watch on new domains by month, so anything that appears is read the month it lands.
Which tool is behind it, and why not a toxicity score?
A live commercial backlink index — the same one the audit reads. A single toxicity number is a guess built from patterns, and it colors a list red without saying why or what to do; the check prints the rule beside every count instead, and the audit prints the reason beside every domain, so the reasoning can be checked by you or the next person who reads it.
NEXT STEP
Flagged links are a clock that is running. The audit reads every one and gets them dealt with this week.
Every site linking to yours read by hand, the ones that fail the rules tiered with the reason beside each, removal requests with a dated log, the disavow file by domain for what stays up, and the reconsideration request when Google has already acted.
