How to Check Backlinks in Ahrefs: Free Checker, Site Explorer and Metrics

What the free checker shows, and what you pay for

Backlink research is what Ahrefs is best known for, and there are two ways in. The free Backlink Checker shows the top 20 links to any site ^[1]. The paid Site Explorer shows all of them, with filters, history and exports. In between sits Ahrefs Free, which shows backlink data only for sites you have verified as your own. This guide walks through how to check backlinks in Ahrefs, what the metrics mean and where the data has limits, based on Ahrefs' own help pages as of 12 October 2026.

The short version is simple. Paste a domain, URL or subfolder into Site Explorer and open the Backlinks or Referring domains report. Use the free checker for a quick look at the top 20 links. Then judge each link with Domain Rating, URL Rating, traffic and relevance together, never with one number alone. No single metric tells you whether a link is good.

Where Ahrefs gets its link data

Ahrefs runs its own crawlers and says it has collected link data since 2013 without using search engines' data. It claims the largest index of live backlinks, updated with fresh data every 15 to 30 minutes. The backlink checker page lists 35 trillion external backlinks in its historical records and 493 billion pages in the index. A full refresh of the whole web takes about two months, and some pages are recrawled 60 times in that period. That is a big index. It is still not the whole web.

Ahrefs renders around 80 million pages a day with JavaScript, so it finds some links that only appear after rendering, and it stores 22.21 trillion internal links as well, which feed its URL Rating. What it leaves out matters just as much. Ahrefs does not store links in PDFs or iframes, or links from pages it has not indexed, and it counts JavaScript links only when they are standard HTML anchor tags. That is why counts differ between tools.

Running a check in Site Explorer, step by step

Enter the target and pick the mode

Open Site Explorer and enter a domain, a subdomain, a subfolder or an exact URL. The mode matters. Domain mode shows links to the whole site, while an exact URL shows links to one page only. For competitor research, start with the domain, then drill into its best pages.

Read the Overview chart first

The Overview shows referring domains, backlinks, Domain Rating and their trends over time. Look at the chart before the numbers. A steady climb in referring domains is healthy. Ahrefs' free tools guide notes that a sudden spike followed by a sharp drop can signal a negative SEO attack, so a jagged line deserves a closer look before you trust the totals.

Count referring domains, not raw links

Referring domains are the unique websites linking to the target, so two links from the New York Times count as one. Ahrefs' research found that most pages without referring domains get no Google traffic, and that more unique referring domains correlate with more search traffic. Correlation, not proof. Still, it is the clearest reason to count linking websites rather than total links, since one generous site can add thousands of backlinks without adding a single new referring domain. The report was rebuilt in 2021 and now shows new and lost links per domain for any date range, a loss-reason filter and an Exclude subdomains toggle that hides links from throwaway blog hosts.

Open Backlinks with grouping on

The Backlinks report lists every linking page with its anchor text and surrounding text. By default it groups similar links, so one link repeated across a blog's archive and search pages shows once, and you can expand a group to see the duplicates. Without this filter, counts can be badly inflated. Keep it on.

Domain Rating and URL Rating, without the myths

What DR measures

Domain Rating measures a site's backlink strength on a 100-point scale, relative to every other site in the index ^[2]. Ahrefs calculates a raw score for every domain, then scales it onto the 0 to 100 range. Each linking domain splits its rating equally across the domains it links to, so a DR 10 site linking to three domains can pass more than a DR 80 site linking to a million. DR is relative. Compare it only with similar sites.

DR and rankings

Ahrefs studied 218,713 domains and found that Domain Rating and keyword rankings correlate well, while noting that a correlation study does not prove causation. Google denies using domain authority as a ranking factor. The help center lists the questions to ask beyond DR: does the site have good links, many pages, many outgoing links, real content, organic traffic and topical relevance? The gist of Ahrefs' own advice is never to judge a site on authority alone. Use DR as a prospecting filter, not a goal.

Why DR moves when you lost nothing

DR can drop even if you lose no links. When a DR 100 site gains links, it cannot become DR 101, so other sites are pushed down. DR also falls when linking domains lose rating or switch links to nofollow. A site can lose a point in a month simply because large websites elsewhere in the index gained links faster than it did. Do not chase small DR changes. Watch referring domains instead, which you control through outreach and content.

URL Rating, and its two versions

URL Rating measures one page's link strength, also on a 100-point scale. It counts both internal and external links, respects nofollow and uses PageRank principles. The scale is logarithmic, so moving from UR 70 to 80 is far harder than from 20 to 30, and Ahrefs says UR correlates with rankings better than DR. There are two versions: a legacy UR in old reports and a reworked one in new reports, calculated since August 2022, so its history starts then. HTTP and HTTPS versions of a URL get the same rating. If two reports disagree, check which UR you are reading.

Telling a good link from a bad one

Ahrefs' help center groups link quality around authority, relevance, anchor text and placement. A page with hundreds of outgoing links passes less value than one with a few, and editorial links inside content are worth more than footer or sidebar links. Relevance can beat raw authority. The organic traffic of each linking page and website is another useful signal. A page that gets search visits is more likely to be indexed and trusted, so a link from a page with zero traffic is worth less.

Low DR is not spam, and there is no spam score

A link from a DR 0 site is not automatically bad. Ahrefs says DR is "not a measure of a website's legitimacy or likelihood of spam", and new, legitimate sites have low DR too. Judge spam by looking at the site. Asked whether it offers a spam score, Ahrefs answers plainly: "No. We don't have such a score." ^[3] It argues that nobody outside Google knows how links are weighed.

Instead, the Best links filter lets you hide links below a DR threshold, links with no traffic, or links from pages with many outgoing links. It can exclude up to 10,000 domains, which Ahrefs describes as a soft disavow inside Ahrefs only, and it changes charts and exports as well. To see only the links Ahrefs labels as spam, enable Known spammy domains in the filter settings and choose low-quality links only.

Toxic links and disavowing

Ahrefs sides with Google here. Its help center quotes Google's guidance that most sites will not need the disavow tool. Disavow only if you have many artificial links and they caused, or will likely cause, a manual action. Tools that sell toxic scores are selling a fear. Ignore them.

Nofollow, UGC and sponsored links

Filters separate nofollow, UGC and sponsored links. Since 2020 Google treats nofollow as a hint and may count such links or not, while noreferrer and noopener attributes have no SEO effect at all. A healthy profile has some of each. That is normal.

Filters that turn a profile into a prospect list

Three more filters do most of the work. The Backlink type filter shows in-content links, image links, redirects and canonicals. The Platform filter groups linking pages into blogs, ecommerce, message boards, wikis and CMS sites, and since January 2026 backlink reports also show page types, such as articles or listicles, and business categories. You can also filter linking domains by top-level domain, for example .gov or .edu, and combine several rules. For link builders chasing authority links in a niche, a .edu filter plus a keyword in the referring page title makes a quick prospecting list.

New, lost and dropped links

Why a link shows as lost

Backlinks 2.0 merged new and lost links into one report with a toggle. Lost links carry a reason: not found, redirect, noindex, not canonical, crawl error, dropped, link removed or broken redirect. Ahrefs adds a link back if a page returns on the next crawl. Dropped has a specific meaning. Ahrefs removed the linking page from its index because it was a duplicate, was blocked by robots.txt for six months, failed three times or had low URL Rating. The link may still exist, because Ahrefs limits how many pages it keeps per domain to stay fresh.

What to do about it

A link marked lost because its page now redirects is often harmless, such as an HTTP to HTTPS move or a trailing-slash change. If the new page still links to you, the link reappears after the next crawl. Do not send outreach emails about these. Wait one crawl cycle. When a linking page truly disappears, Page Inspect shows when Ahrefs first saw it live and what it contained, and Ahrefs suggests checking Archive.org too. Signs of an accidental deletion include many links still pointing to the page and internal links still leading to it. In that case, ask the site owner to restore it.

How long new links take to appear

Ahrefs says finding a new backlink can take anywhere from a few days to some weeks. Pages on higher-DR sites and higher-UR pages are crawled more often, while low-DR sites with many pages may be only partly crawled. If a link is missing, check that AhrefsBot can reach the page.

Mining competitors for link opportunities

The Broken backlinks report shows links pointing to 404 pages on the target. On your own site, restore or redirect those pages to keep their value. On a competitor's site, they are outreach opportunities: offer your page as a replacement. The Best by links report ranks a site's pages by how many links they earn, and filtering it by HTTP 404 finds broken pages with many links. On a competitor, it reveals their most linkable content. That tells you what to build. Then build better.

Link Intersect shows sites that link to your competitors but not to you. Enter three competitors and your own domain, then filter to domains linking to at least two of them, because those sites already link to your topic. The Linked domains and Anchors reports show where a site links out and with what text, which helps you check a prospect before outreach: a site linking out to hundreds of unrelated domains is a poor target. The full Broken backlinks report, Link Intersect and the outgoing link reports all start on Standard.

Two features catch links as they form. Ahrefs' Firehose streams new pages that name your brand as soon as they are published, and unlinked mentions are easy link requests because the author already wrote about you. Firehose is priced separately from Ahrefs plans. Ahrefs Alerts email you about new and lost backlinks for chosen targets. Set one for your own site and one for each main competitor. A competitor gaining several links from one publication is a sign of a campaign worth studying.

Plans, credits and history

History is what separates the plans for backlink work. Lite shows 6 months of backlink history, Standard 2 years and Advanced 5 years ^[4]. History controls how far back you can compare, and for link audits after a penalty, longer history matters. Credits matter too. On Lite and Starter, opening the Backlinks report costs a credit, and each filter another. Exports are capped at 500,000 rows a month on Lite, and the report itself shows up to 2,500 rows there. A big competitor's profile will not fit in one export. Our Ahrefs pricing guide covers the plans in full.

Verifying your own site helps on every plan. It adds 500 Site Explorer credits a month for that site's URLs, so on Lite your own backlink checks do not eat into the 1,000 credits per user. On the free plan, verification is what unlocks your backlink data in the first place. You can verify through Search Console, DNS, an HTML file or a meta tag. Several free tools also cover quick checks without a plan. The Website Authority Checker shows any site's DR, and the Broken Link Checker finds broken links on any page.

How Ahrefs' index compares with rivals

Ahrefs says 64% of SEO professionals trusted its link data over competitors in a 2022 industry survey. SE Ranking lists 2.7 trillion backlinks and Moz cites over 40 trillion links. Those figures are not comparable. Index sizes are measured differently, by live links, historical records or crawled pages. The only fair comparison is to look up the same five or ten sites in two tools during a free tier or trial and compare the referring domains each one finds. If you want to see what the free tier allows, read whether Ahrefs is free.

A 30-minute backlink audit

Once the reports make sense, a short monthly routine uses only the ones covered above. It turns lost links into quick wins:

1. Open Referring domains for your site and sort by DR.
2. Check the top 20 for relevance.
3. Open Broken backlinks and redirect the top pages.
4. Open lost links and contact sites that removed links by accident.
5. Repeat every month.

The bottom line

Ahrefs' backlink data is the reason most SEOs pay for it. Count referring domains, not raw link counts. Use DR to compare sites, UR to judge pages, and your own judgment for spam, since Ahrefs offers no spam score and says low DR is not a sign of one. Start with the free checker and its top 20 links, verify your own site for free data, then move to Lite once you need the full list and to Standard when broken backlinks and Link Intersect matter.