How to Check Your Backlinks (Step by Step)

Backlinks are one of the strongest ranking signals in Google Search. Knowing which sites link to you, which links are high quality, and which might be doing harm is essential for any serious SEO effort.

The good news is that checking backlinks does not require an expensive subscription. This guide walks through how to check backlinks for any domain, for free.

What you need

A backlink checker tool. Crawly's free backlink checker uses data from Common Crawl, one of the largest open web indexes available. It shows referring domains, total links, link quality ratings, PageRank rank, and outbound links. No account required.

Step 1: Enter the domain

Go to the backlink checker and type or paste the domain you want to check. You can enter the domain with or without the protocol (https://) or www. prefix. The tool normalises it automatically.

You can check:

• Your own site, to see your current backlink profile
• A competitor's site, to find link building opportunities
• A prospect's site, before pitching them for a link

Press Check or hit Enter to run the lookup.

Step 2: Review the summary stats

Once the results load, the first thing to look at is the summary block at the top:

• Referring domains. The number of unique websites that link to the domain. This is the most important number. 100 links from 100 different domains is far more valuable than 100 links from a single site.
• Total links. The total number of individual link instances. This is always equal to or greater than referring domains.
• Hosts. The number of distinct hostnames in the link data.

Below the summary you will see PageRank rank and Harmonic rank, which give you a sense of how the domain compares globally. A percentile label next to each rank makes this easy to interpret at a glance.

Step 3: Check link quality

The donut chart shows how referring domains break down by quality rating: High, Medium, and Low. A healthy backlink profile has a good mix of High and Medium quality domains. A profile dominated by Low-quality links is a signal that something may need attention.

Each linking domain is also flagged if it falls below rank 50 million globally. These are listed as potentially toxic and are worth reviewing if you are auditing a site or building a disavow file.

Step 4: Look at the top backlinks

The Top backlinks by authority section shows the ten most authoritative domains linking to the site. This is useful for a quick sense of the profile's quality without scrolling through hundreds of rows.

For each domain you will see:

• The source domain name and its favicon
• A quality rating badge (High, Medium, or Low)
• The number of links from that domain

Step 5: Browse or filter the full list

Below the top backlinks is the full list of referring domains, paginated at 50 per page. Use the filter box to search for a specific domain if you are looking for a particular link or checking whether a site links to you.

You can switch to the Outlinks tab at any time to see every external domain the target site links out to, with link counts.

Step 6: Export to CSV

Click Export CSV to download the full backlink list. The export includes the source domain, quality rating, and link count for every row. This is useful for:

• Sharing a backlink report with a client
• Building a disavow file from low-quality links
• Importing into a spreadsheet for further analysis

What to do next

Once you have the data, the most common next steps are:

• Build more links from the types of sites already linking to your strongest competitors
• Audit for toxic links if the profile contains a large proportion of Low-quality or flagged domains
• Track growth by revisiting the tool monthly and comparing referring domain counts over time

For a deeper look at interpreting what you find, read the guide on how to read a backlink profile. If you want to use the data to improve your rankings, competitor backlink analysis is one of the most effective places to start.

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Checking backlinks used to mean paying for Ahrefs or Semrush. For most audits, especially for smaller sites or quick competitor checks, a free tool built on Common Crawl data is all you need.

Check your backlinks now with Crawly's free tool.