You can search for backlinks to any website using Google Search Console (for your own site), free browser-based tools, or paid SEO platforms that crawl the web and maintain massive link databases. The method you choose depends on whether you’re checking your own backlinks, researching a competitor’s link profile, or hunting for specific linking opportunities.
Check Your Own Backlinks in Google Search Console
Google Search Console is the most reliable starting point for your own site because the data comes directly from Google’s index. It’s free, and it shows you links Google actually knows about. To access it, open Search Console, then navigate to Links in the left sidebar. From there, the External Links section breaks your data into three views:
- Top linked pages: Shows which of your pages receive the most backlinks. Click “More” to drill into a specific URL and see which sites link to it.
- Top linking sites: Shows which domains send you the most links. Click into any domain to see exactly which of your pages it points to.
- Top linking text: Shows the anchor text other sites use when linking to you, which helps you understand how the web describes your content.
You can combine these views to answer very specific questions. For example, to see every link a particular website sends to a particular page on your site, go to Top linked pages, click “More,” select the page URL, then filter by the linking domain. The report also covers internal links, so you can audit how your own pages connect to each other.
Google Search Console lets you export up to 100,000 rows of link data as a CSV file or Google Sheet. You get two export options: “Latest links,” sorted by discovery date, and “More sample links,” which pulls a broader sample from Google’s full dataset. Single-table views cap exports at 1,000 rows. For most sites, this gives you a thorough picture of your backlink profile without spending a dollar.
Use Free Backlink Checker Tools
When you want to check backlinks to a site you don’t own, or you want a second data source alongside Search Console, free tools fill the gap. They won’t give you as much depth as paid platforms, but they’re useful for quick research.
Ahrefs offers a free backlink checker that shows the top 100 backlinks to any domain or URL. You’ll see the linking page, anchor text, and a domain rating score. That’s enough for a snapshot, though the 100-link cap means you’ll miss the long tail on larger sites. Keywords Everywhere, a Chrome extension, lets both free and paid users check up to 5,000 backlinks per domain, with data updated monthly. OpenLinkProfiler is entirely free and lets you export up to 1,000 of the most recent backlinks in CSV format, with filters for sorting by link type, anchor text, and a “Link Influence Score” that estimates each link’s value.
BuzzSumo’s free tier allows 10 searches per month, letting you explore which pages link to a given URL. This is especially handy for content-focused research since BuzzSumo also shows how widely linked content was shared on social platforms.
Paid Platforms for Deeper Analysis
If you’re doing backlink research regularly, whether for your own SEO strategy or client work, paid tools offer larger databases, faster crawling, and more sophisticated filtering. The main options span a wide price range.
Semrush starts at $119.95 per month for its Pro plan and includes a large backlink database, rapid discovery of new links, an Authority Score metric (0 to 100) for evaluating linking domains, and a toxicity scoring system for flagging risky links. It also bundles keyword research and rank tracking, making it an all-in-one SEO platform rather than a backlink-only tool.
Ahrefs starts at $99 per month for its Lite plan. Its standout features include tracking new and lost backlinks over time, analyzing the ratio of dofollow to nofollow links, checking anchor text distribution, and auditing broken inbound links. SE Ranking is a more affordable entry point at $39 per month, offering a backlink gap analyzer that compares your link profile against competitors, plus real-time status checking to confirm whether links are still live. Moz Link Explorer starts at $99 per month and includes a Spam Score metric that helps you identify low-quality links pointing to your site or a competitor’s.
LinkMiner, starting at $29.90 per month, is the most budget-friendly paid option. It focuses specifically on backlink analysis rather than broader SEO, with features like embedded website previews (so you can see the linking page without leaving the tool) and a Link Strength metric for prioritizing which backlinks matter most.
Search for Backlinks Manually with Google
Google’s advanced search operators let you find backlinks and brand mentions without any specialized tool. This approach is slower but free, and it’s particularly useful for finding unlinked mentions, where someone references your brand or content but doesn’t actually link to you.
To find pages that mention your brand but exclude your own site, search: "your brand name" -site:yourdomain.com. The quotes force an exact match, and the minus sign excludes your own pages from the results. You can narrow this further by adding a topic keyword, like "your brand name" running shoes -site:yourdomain.com, to find mentions in a specific context.
To check whether a specific site links to you, use site:example.com "yourdomain.com". This returns pages on that domain that contain your URL in their text. It’s not a perfect backlink checker since the URL might appear without being a clickable link, but it gives you a quick answer without logging into any tool.
Analyze Competitor Backlink Profiles
Searching for your competitors’ backlinks reveals where they’re earning links that you could pursue too. This process, sometimes called link gap analysis, identifies sites linking to competing domains but not to yours.
Start by assessing your own backlink profile so you have a baseline for comparison. Check your domain authority or domain rating using any of the free tools mentioned above. Then enter a competitor’s domain into the same tool and compare. You’re looking for patterns: which types of sites link to them (news outlets, industry blogs, directories, resource pages), what content earns the most links, and whether specific anchor text themes repeat.
Most paid platforms automate this comparison. SE Ranking’s backlink gap analyzer and Semrush’s competitor analysis tools let you enter multiple domains side by side and filter for links that point to competitors but not to you. The output is essentially a prospecting list of sites worth reaching out to.
Focus on referring domains rather than raw backlink counts. A competitor with 500 links from 50 domains has a more concentrated profile than one with 500 links from 400 domains, and the strategy you’d use to close that gap differs significantly.
Evaluate Link Quality
Not all backlinks help your site. Some are neutral, and a pattern of low-quality links can actually hurt your search visibility. When you pull a backlink report, look beyond the numbers and assess what you’re actually seeing.
High-quality backlinks generally come from relevant domains in your industry or niche, appear within editorial content rather than footers or sidebars, use natural anchor text (your brand name, a descriptive phrase, or a bare URL), and originate from pages that real people visit. A link from a well-known industry publication or a university resource page carries far more weight than one from a random directory.
Warning signs of toxic or risky backlinks include anchor text that exactly matches a commercial keyword (like “best running shoes” rather than a natural phrase), links from sites in unrelated industries, links from pages with hidden text, clusters of links from sites sharing the same IP address, and links from suspected private blog networks. These patterns suggest the links were created to manipulate rankings rather than to genuinely reference your content.
Semrush assigns a Toxicity Score from 0 to 100 to each backlink, with higher scores indicating greater risk. Moz uses a Spam Score for a similar purpose. If you find a pattern of toxic links pointing to your site, Google provides a disavow tool in Search Console that tells its crawler to ignore those links when evaluating your site. Use it selectively, since disavowing legitimate links by mistake can hurt more than it helps.
Pay attention to link attributes as well. Links tagged with rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored", or rel="ugc" signal to Google that the link shouldn’t pass ranking value. A backlink profile made up entirely of nofollow links looks very different from one with a healthy mix of followed and nofollowed links. Most tools let you filter by these attributes so you can see the breakdown at a glance.