Ubersuggest Backlink Checker: What It Shows, Its Moz Data and How to Use It

What the backlink checker shows

Ubersuggest's backlink checker lives in Backlinks Overview, and it covers the basics well. For any domain or page it shows total backlinks, referring domains, Domain Authority, follow and nofollow links, anchor text distribution, and new and lost backlinks ^[1]. The app page adds a link history view for tracking a competitor's link building over time. Six metrics, one report. It is a solid checker. It is not a link-audit suite. The data is licensed from Moz, free accounts see 100 backlinks per site, and the toxic-link tools that specialists expect are missing, by the vendor's account.

Enter a domain or a single page URL and the report evaluates that link profile. The app defaults to the whole domain, while the Chrome extension opens backlink data for the exact URL in a search result. A page and its domain can differ by thousands of links, so switch scope deliberately and compare like with like. Both the overview and the opportunity report also have an Exclude subdomains option. Exclude them when a blog or store lives on a subdomain you do not want counted, and include them for a full brand picture.

What each plan lets you see

The plan you pay for decides how much of a link profile you actually get to see. Free accounts see up to 100 backlinks per site. Paid plans go deeper, and the pricing page lists 2,000, 5,000 and 10,000 backlink rows on Individual, Business and Enterprise, each with 3 years of link history and 30 days of new and lost links ^[2].

Free history and new-and-lost limits are not stated anywhere we found. In practice, a small site with a few hundred links sees its whole profile on Individual, while a large competitor with tens of thousands of links shows only its top slice even on Enterprise. Exports follow similar lines. Backlinks Overview exports to CSV or to a PDF report with charts, and CSV rows carry DA, PA and Spam Score. Backlink Opportunity exports cap at 10 rows on Free and 500 rows on every paid plan, for referring domains and backlinks alike. Five hundred prospects is a month of outreach for most teams.

To export everything, page through all results or use the upward arrow to load more before exporting. The PDF includes the backlinks-over-time chart, the new and lost referring domains chart and the backlink rows, so it is presentable to a client as is. There is no white label, though. One limit is disputed: the export help article caps Backlinks Overview at 5,000 rows on Enterprise, while the pricing page lists 10,000. The pricing page is newer. Expect 10,000, and confirm before a large audit.

Moz data under an Ubersuggest label

The backlink index is not Ubersuggest's own. The data help article puts it plainly: "Our backlinks data is sourced exclusively from the MOZ API" ^[3]. That brings Moz's metrics along with it, namely Domain Authority, Page Authority and Spam Score. So these are Moz numbers in an Ubersuggest interface, and Moz Pro sells the same metrics directly. Freshness follows Moz too. One help article says link data updates monthly, prioritizing high-value, crawlable pages, and that the new and lost graph is ideally daily but the data from the Moz API may be a few days old. Expect fresh trends, not live counts.

DA, PA and Spam Score

Domain Authority was developed by Moz and scores a domain from 1 to 100, with higher meaning stronger, and Moz typically updates it monthly. It is not a Google ranking factor, so use it to compare sites rather than to predict rankings. Page Authority rates a single page instead of a whole site, and Ubersuggest now feeds it into its SEO Difficulty score. You can check it through Traffic Overview or read it in backlink CSV exports. Spam Score is the only spam metric in the reports, and the link-building guide advises choosing backlinks with a low one. A high Spam Score is a flag, not a verdict. Look at the page before acting.

Reading a link profile the right way

Total backlinks counts every link, while referring domains counts unique linking sites. The guide says that over time you should see growth in referring domains, not just total backlinks, and it is right. Ten links from one site are worth far less than ten links from ten sites, because each independent domain is a separate vote, and a sitewide footer link can add hundreds of backlinks while adding only one referring domain. A toggle called one link per domain shows and exports a single link from each linking site. Turn it on to see the breadth of a profile, and off to see every page that links.

Attributes, anchors and placement

Filters in Backlinks Overview mark each link as Follow or NoFollow. The help center says a balanced mix of the two signals authenticity: follow links pass authority, and nofollow links still bring visitors. Anchor text distribution shows the words other sites use to link to you, and the vendor's guidance favors a natural mix of branded terms, partial keywords and neutral anchors. Too many exact-match anchors can look manipulated. Placement counts as well. Links placed naturally in the main content tend to carry more weight than links in footers, sidebars or author bios, so ask for in-content placement in every pitch.

Link history

The link history view tracks a competitor's link building over time, and history runs 3 years on every paid plan. That shows whether a rival's growth comes from steady earning or a single campaign. Patterns matter more than totals. Combined with Top Pages by Traffic, which the link-building guide recommends for seeing which competitor pages attract traffic and links, it tells you what content earns links in your niche. That is usually data, tools or definitive guides rather than ordinary blog posts. If a competitor's study earns 200 links, a better study can earn some of them.

New and lost links, and spikes that are not what they seem

The new and lost section shows links gained and referring domains lost, with a detailed breakdown further down the page. The graph covers the past month, and hovering over any point shows that day's changes. A sudden drop usually means a linking page was removed, redirected or changed. Lost links are often recoverable, and the guide notes that reclaiming them is often easier than acquiring new ones, because a page that once linked to you already trusts you. Check the lost list each month and ask politely for reinstatement.

Spikes need more care. A jump can come from new content, PR campaigns, technical changes, scraper sites, spam, tool index updates or domain redirects. Often the links are not new at all; they were newly discovered during an index refresh, which explains many overnight jumps after a data update. If the linking pages are old, nothing happened to your site. Only the index changed. The help center suggests checking the new referring domains, recently discovered links and linking pages, then confirming against recent marketing activity. Most spikes are harmless.

Scraper sites that copy your content can inflate totals with low-value links. Spam signals include automated links, PBN links, irrelevant foreign domains and large volumes appearing fast. The advice is to monitor and to disavow only with clear evidence of harm. Calm beats panic. Google Search Console is the cross-check here. It shows only a sample of backlinks and may lag behind SEO tools, but if both show similar growth, a spike is likely genuine.

Why some backlinks never show up

Ubersuggest's help articles disagree on coverage. The export article says Backlinks Overview shows all backlinks to a URL or domain, while the missing-links article says the report shows a selection of the most relevant ones. The second describes practice: high-value links come first, so expect gaps in long tails. Crawl priority follows authority. Pages with lower DA may take longer to appear and be updated less often, so a link from a small blog may take weeks to show while a link from a major site shows faster. They still count.

Three technical rules also hide links. Links on non-canonical pages are ignored, and pages with a noindex tag or blocked by robots.txt are excluded, so if a link you earned does not appear, check those three things on the linking page first. There is no way to request indexing of a specific backlink. Links appear when the crawl finds them, and Search Console may show a link to your own site sooner. Expect different totals in other tools, too. Each runs its own crawler, updates at different times and filters differently. Compare trends inside one tool. Never mix totals across tools.

Backlink Opportunity, the best part for outreach

Backlink Opportunity compares your domain against one or more competitors and finds websites that link to them but not to you ^[1]. It is a ready prospect list. You can add up to 5 competitors, each with an Exclude subdomains option, and five well-chosen rivals produce a list that is both long and relevant. Pick rivals that rank, not just famous brands. The report lists each referring domain, its authority and the competitor it links to, and it splits results into domain-level opportunities, where one domain links to several competitors from different pages, and URL-specific backlinks that show the exact page to pitch. Start with domains.

Domain Authority sits right in the opportunity list, so sort by DA first, then check relevance by hand. A relevant site with DA 30 often beats an irrelevant one with DA 70. The help center also notes that lower-DA sites with active and engaged audiences can be valuable link-building opportunities. Smaller sites answer emails. Large ones rarely do. Mix both in every campaign. Ubersuggest does not send emails for you, so the outreach itself happens in your own inbox, where personalized pitches that offer newer data, more depth or a complementary angle work best.

Toxic links and disavow: you are on your own

The home page is direct: "Note that we do not currently ship a toxic-link scoring or disavow-file workflow" ^[4]. Spam Score is the only built-in signal. The toxic-links help article tells you to review and export your profile with Ubersuggest or Search Console and judge links yourself. Disavowing happens in Google Search Console, not inside Ubersuggest: you upload a disavow file with Google's Disavow Links tool, and processing can take weeks or months. Ubersuggest supplies the list. Google receives the file.

The help center says disavowing is rarely necessary for most websites and should be treated as a last resort. It names three cases: a manual action, many clearly spammy links, or failed removal requests. Do not disavow links just because they look unfamiliar or have low authority. Try removal first by asking site owners to delete the link or add nofollow, and keep records. If you must disavow, the file is UTF-8 plain text with one URL or domain per line, using the domain: prefix for whole sites. Disavowing good links by mistake can hurt rankings. Be conservative.

A six-step link-building routine

1. Audit your own profile. Enter your domain in Backlinks Overview, note total backlinks, referring domains, the follow share and the top anchors, and export the list as CSV. Save that baseline with the date.
2. Study a competitor. Run the same report on a rival and look at which pages attract the most links, which sites link to them, the anchors they use and the quality of the referring domains.
3. Find link gaps. Open Backlink Opportunity, add up to five competitors and export the referring domains that link to them but not to you. Sort by authority and relevance and keep the top 50.
4. Reclaim lost links. Check the lost links list each month and ask for reinstatement.
5. Pitch personally. Explain clearly how your content adds value to their readers, and avoid templates.
6. Track referring domains. Re-run the overview monthly and compare referring domains with your baseline.

The last step is where most teams measure the wrong thing. A steady rise in unique referring domains over six months is the clearest sign a campaign is working, far more reliable than total backlinks, which a single sitewide link can inflate overnight. On a free account, the routine still works at a slower pace: use the 3 daily reports for one full overview of your own site and two competitors, add the Chrome extension's 40 daily searches for quick referring domain counts, and use Google Search Console for your own complete sample.

The Chrome extension and AI assistants

The extension shows a referring domain count and a backlink list for each search result, using the same backlink database as the app, and it shows the average referring domains of the top ten above the results. It is a quick read before you choose a keyword; our Chrome extension guide covers it in full. Backlinks also reach AI assistants. The MCP server includes five backlink tools covering the profile, referring domains and opportunities, so you can ask Claude for sites that link to two competitors but not to you and get a list back. Those calls spend your daily reports.

How it compares, and who it fits

Ahrefs claims 35T external backlinks in history from its own crawler. Ahrefs Starter costs $29 a month, the same as Individual. For link-heavy work, Ahrefs is the deeper tool, as our Ubersuggest vs Ahrefs comparison explains. Moz Pro shows the same underlying index directly, since Ubersuggest's backlinks come from the Moz API. Moz Pro Standard costs $99 a month against $29 for Ubersuggest Individual, and Moz adds its own tools on top. Semrush SEO costs $139 a month and SE Ranking Core $129, both with their own backlink tools, both more than four times Ubersuggest Individual, and both tracking rankings daily, which Ubersuggest does not. Buy them for the whole suite, not for links alone.

The fit is clear. Small sites, local businesses and bloggers who check their own links monthly and run small outreach campaigns are well served: 2,000 rows, Moz metrics and a 500-row prospect export cover the job, and most never outgrow it. Link builders, digital PR teams and agencies auditing large profiles are not. They need more rows, toxic-link scoring and their own crawl. Before you commit, ask support by email whether the Enterprise backlink export is 5,000 or 10,000 rows and how often the Moz data is refreshed in the app.

The bottom line

Ubersuggest is a capable, cheap backlink checker built on Moz data, with a useful opportunity finder and clear exports. It lacks toxic-link scoring and a large in-house index, and it says so itself. For small sites, it is enough. For link specialists, it is a starting point. The Ubersuggest pricing guide shows which plan gives you the rows you need.