How to Check Website Backlinks, Then Prove Each One Still Exists

Here is how to check website backlinks in three steps: open the Links report in Google Search Console for any site you own, use a third-party backlink index (the free CrawlTide backlink checker, Ahrefs, Semrush or Moz) for sites you do not own, then open the linking pages that matter and confirm each link is still there, points at a live URL, and is not marked nofollow or sponsored.

Most guides stop after the first two steps. Say your export lists 400 linking pages. That number means very little until you know how many of those links still exist, still point at a live page, and pass value. The third step is where you find out, and it decides whether you redirect a page, chase a lost link, or ignore a spam domain.

Which backlink source should you use?

Use Search Console first for your own site, a third-party index for anyone else's, and a browser check for any link you plan to act on. Each source answers a different question:

Source	What it covers	Use it when	The catch
Google Search Console Links report	External links Google has found to a site you have verified	You want Google's own view of who links to your site	A sample, not a full list; may include removed links; does not show nofollow
Bing Webmaster Tools Backlinks report	Links Bing has found to a site you have verified	You want a second first-party list to cross-check Google's	Also only Bing's view, and only for verified sites
Third-party backlink index (CrawlTide backlink checker, Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz)	Each provider's own crawl of the web, for any domain	You are checking a competitor, a prospect, or a client before you have access	Every index sees a different slice, so totals never match across tools
Manual check in the browser	One linking page at a time	You are about to report, recover or disavow a specific link	Slow, so save it for the links you will act on

How do I find out who links to my website?

For a site you have verified, Google Search Console's Links report is the free, first-party answer to "who links to my website": it lists the external links Google has found to your pages. Open your property, choose Links in the left menu, and you get three external views plus one internal one.

• Top linked pages: which of your pages have the most backlinks from other sites, grouped by canonical URL.
• Top linking sites: the outside domains linking to you, rolled up to the root domain (so www.example.com shows as example.com).
• Top linking text: the anchor text other sites use. Google notes this covers only links from outside your property.
• Internal links: which of your pages are linked most from within your own site.

Click into a page under Top linked pages to see the domains linking to it, then click a domain to see the exact linking URLs. That drill-down is the fastest route from "this page has links" to "here is the page I need to open". For a full record, use Export external links. Google's help page for the Links report documents the limits. The Export button returns up to 100,000 rows, while exporting a single table caps at 1,000 rows.

Bing Webmaster Tools has its own Backlinks report for verified sites, and you can import your site from Search Console instead of verifying it again. It is worth a look because Bing runs its own crawl, so it can surface links Google's report leaves out, and the two together make a better lead list than either alone. Both are covered in our roundup of free SEO tools from Google and Bing.

Is the Search Console Links report complete?

No. The Links report is a sample of what Google has seen over time, not a live inventory, and Google says so directly: "This report isn't a comprehensive list of every link on your site." Four limits from the same documentation shape how you should read it.

• Tables are truncated. On-screen tables stop at 1,000 rows, so a well-linked site will not see its long tail without an export.
• Duplicates are merged. A link from the same source URL to the same target URL counts once after normalization, so the totals are smaller than a raw crawl.
• Some URLs are left out, such as non-indexed pages or deduplicated URLs.
• Stale links stay listed. Google warns that listed links "may have since been removed, or a page may no longer exist", and the report "doesn't specify if a link is marked as nofollow".

That last point is the one that catches people. A link can sit in Search Console for months after the linking site deleted it, and nothing in the report tells you whether it passes any value. Treat the export as a list of leads to verify, not a scorecard.

How do I check backlinks for a site I do not own?

You need a third-party backlink index, because Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools only cover properties you have verified. These tools crawl the web on their own schedule and keep their own link database, which is why two tools almost never agree on a total.

Three habits keep third-party numbers honest:

• Count referring domains before backlinks. A hundred links from one site is still one site vouching for you; sitewide footer links inflate backlink totals without adding new sources.
• Compare sites inside one tool. Each index sees a different slice of the web, so your total from one provider and a competitor's total from another are not comparable.
• Do not translate authority scores. Each provider's domain score is computed from its own link graph and does not convert into another provider's score, or into anything Google publishes.

To get a quick read on any domain, the free CrawlTide backlink checker returns totals, the top 20 referring domains and the top 20 backlinks from DataForSEO's index, shown exactly as the provider reports them. Run your own domain and one competitor through the same tool and the comparison is at least like for like.

How many backlinks does my website have?

Start with the number of referring domains, not the number of backlinks, because the domain count is far more stable from tool to tool and is closer to "how many sites vouch for you". In Search Console, the Top linking sites table (or its export) gives you that count of linking domains for your own site. In a third-party tool, read the referring domains figure next to the backlink total.

The gap between the two numbers is informative on its own. A hypothetical example: a site shows 2,400 backlinks from 60 referring domains, an average of 40 links per domain. That pattern usually means a few sitewide links (a footer credit, a blogroll, a partner's template) are carrying the total. Sixty domains is the number to track month over month; the 2,400 will swing every time one of those templates changes.

Expect the totals to differ between Search Console, Bing and each paid index. None of them is the "real" number. Pick one source per question, note which one you used, and compare like with like.

How do you confirm a backlink is still live?

You confirm a backlink by opening the linking page, finding the link to your site, and reading its href and rel attributes. It takes a minute per link, so do it for the links you would actually act on: your top referring domains, any new domain you plan to cite in a report, and anything that looks suspicious.

1. Open the linking URL from your export. If it returns a 404 or redirects to an unrelated page, the link is gone, whatever the report says.
2. Find your link. Search the rendered page for your domain, then right-click the link and choose Inspect. Links injected by JavaScript may not appear in View Source but will show in the inspector.
3. Read the href. Make sure it points at your current URL, not an old path that now redirects or 404s.
4. Read the rel attribute. This is how you tell whether a backlink is nofollow (see below).
5. Check that the linking page is indexable. A link on a page carrying a noindex tag sits on a page Google has been asked to keep out of its index. The indexability checker shows that in one pass, and our guide to the noindex checker and its four possible results explains how to read each outcome.

How do I know if a backlink is nofollow?

Inspect the link and read its rel attribute; Search Console will not tell you. Google's guidance on qualifying outbound links defines three values: sponsored for "advertisements or paid placements", ugc for user-generated content such as comments and forum posts, and nofollow for when the other values do not apply. Google says links marked with these attributes "will generally not be followed". A link with no rel value, or one with only noopener or noreferrer, is a normal followed link.

What does each detail tell you once you have found the link?

Detail	Where to see it	What it tells you
rel value	Browser inspector	Whether the site qualified the link as paid, user-generated, or nofollow
Anchor text	Search Console Top linking text, or the page itself	How other sites describe your page; a sudden run of exact-match commercial anchors is worth investigating
Placement	The page itself	An editorial link inside body copy is a different signal from a footer, sidebar, or author-bio link
Linking page status	Load the URL; check for noindex	Whether the page hosting the link still exists and is indexable
Target URL status	Load your linked URL	Whether the link lands on a live page or on a 404 that wastes it

Should you disavow the spammy links you find?

Almost certainly not. Google's disavow documentation says "most sites will not need to use this tool" and that Google "can assess which links to trust without additional guidance" in most cases.

The same page sets two conditions that must both hold before disavowing makes sense: you have "a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links" pointing at your site, and those links "have caused a manual action, or likely will cause a manual action". A handful of scraper domains in your export does not meet that bar. If you have no manual action in Search Console and you did not buy or trade links, leave the file alone.

How often should you check your backlinks?

Once a month is enough for most sites, and the useful version of the job is a comparison, not a snapshot. One export tells you who links to you; two exports a month apart tell you what you gained, what you lost, and what you should fix.

1. Export external links from Search Console and save the file with the date in its name.
2. Diff by linking domain against last month's file. New domains go on a "verify" list; missing domains go on a "check" list.
3. Verify the new ones using the five steps above. Note the rel value and placement next to each.
4. Check the lost ones. If the linking page still exists and simply dropped your link, a short, specific email to the editor sometimes restores it. If the page is gone, move on.
5. Fix wasted links on your side. Cross-check Top linked pages against your own site: any linked URL that now returns a 404 is throwing those links away. A 301 redirect to the closest live page recovers them without asking anyone for anything.
6. Run one competitor through the same third-party index each month and note which new referring domains they earned. Those are your outreach leads.

Step five is the one most sites skip and the cheapest win on the list: the links already exist, they just point at a page you deleted or moved.

If the spreadsheet diff becomes a chore, that is the part software does well. CrawlTide's backlink monitoring on paid plans keeps your link profile from DataForSEO, records each link's follow status, and marks a link lost, with the date it noticed, only after a full check confirms it is gone. The Free plan does not include backlink monitoring.

What a backlink check cannot tell you

Knowing how to check website backlinks tells you which links exist and how they are marked. It cannot tell you everything:

• How Google weighs any single link. No tool, including Search Console, shows the value Google assigns to a specific backlink. Third-party authority scores are each vendor's own estimate.
• Every link that exists. Every index, Google's included, is partial. A link missing from all of them may still be real.
• What happened this morning. Indexes refresh on their own schedules. Our free checker caches each lookup for up to seven days, and Search Console can keep listing a link long after it was removed.
• Whether a link sends visitors. Use your analytics referral report for that; a followed link from a page nobody reads can still send no traffic.

Where to start this week

If you have never looked, the quickest way to learn how to check website backlinks is to start with your own Search Console export and verify your top ten referring domains by hand. Then see how your link profile compares with one competitor's in the free CrawlTide backlink checker, using the same index for both so the numbers mean something.