Backlinks: referring domains
The Domains page — aggregate view by source domain with Total / Active / Lost counts, backlink counts per domain, Domain Rank 0–100, first detection, status + domain search filters.
The Referring Domains page (third sidebar item in the Backlinks group) shows your backlink profile aggregated by source domain instead of link-by-link. It’s the right view to:
- Understand how many distinct domains link to you (the most important metric in the backlink profile, see note below)
- See who links to you most (sites that have more than one link to you)
- Identify lost domains (zero active links remaining) to recover through outreach
Domains > Links. Having 100 backlinks from 100 different domains is worth much more than 1,000 backlinks from the same domain. The diversity of the referring profile is a primary signal for Google: more unique references beats many links from the same site.
The 3 stat cards
- Total — unique domains with at least one detected backlink (active or historical)
- Active ✅ — domains with at least one currently active link
- Lost ❌ — domains with zero active links (all lost or broken): ideal candidates for a recovery outreach to the webmaster
Filters and search
Chips for All / Active / Lost + text search by domain name (icontains).
The table
One row per source domain. Columns (sortable):
| Column | What it is |
|---|---|
| Domain | Source domain with a link to the homepage (sortable) |
| Status | Pill Active (all links active), Partial (some links lost) or Lost (no active links) |
| Backlinks | Total number of links from this domain (sortable); below, in small text, the active / lost breakdown |
| Domain Rank | Domain authority on a 0–100 scale (sortable). Raw values from the provider are 0–1000 but the UI always shows the capped 100 version |
| First seen | When you received the first backlink from this domain |
| Last verified | Last confirmed presence in the snapshot |
What to do with it
- “Lost” domains with high backlinks_count → there were many links and now they’re gone: a template or policy change on the site broke everything. Worth an email to the webmaster.
- “Active” domains with very high DR (≥50) → valuable relationships: keep them safe, avoid breaking destination pages (missing redirects = broken backlink).
- “Active” domains with very low DR (<10) and many links → possible link farm or spam: compare with the Backlinks (monitoring) list and consider disavow if the spam score is high.
Update frequency
Automatic every 4 weeks (28 days), like all pages in the Backlinks section.
Empty state
“No domains found” — wait for the first snapshot (it starts on its own a few minutes after the project is added).
See also:
- Backlinks overview → — KPIs and trends of the backlink profile
- Backlinks (monitoring) → — list of individual links with disavow
- Anchor Text Ranking → — anchor texts
Last updated: 5 September 2026