Backlinks: referring domains

The Domains page — aggregate view by source domain with Total / Active / Broken / Lost counts, backlink counts per domain, Domain Rank 0–100, first detection, status + domain search filters.

The Referring domains page (the Domains item, third in the Backlinks group of the sidebar) 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 (all links lost) 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 4 figures at the top

  • Total — present + lost: all the domains that have linked to the site
  • Active — domains with at least one currently active link
  • Broken — No active links: domains with no active link but at least one broken link (error, noindex or not yet verified)
  • Lost — domains with all links lost: ideal candidates for a recovery outreach to the webmaster

In the Referring domains card, the All / Active / Broken / Lost chips (with the count) filter the table; at the top right is the search by domain name.

The Referring domains page with the four figures Total, Active, Broken and Lost, the All, Active, Broken and Lost chips and the domain search highlighted; below, the table with domain, status, backlinks, active and lost detail, Domain Rank and the first seen and last check dates

The table

One row per source domain, the domain with the most backlinks first. Columns:

Column What it is
Domain Source domain with a link to the homepage
Status The same words as backlinks: active (at least one active link), broken (no active link but at least one broken) or lost on … (all links lost, with the date)
Backlink Total number of links from this domain
Detail The active · broken · lost breakdown (e.g. “2,619 active · 31 lost”)
Domain Rank Domain authority on a 0–100 scale
First seen When you received the first backlink from this domain
Last check Last confirmed presence in the snapshot

What to do with it

  • Lost domains with many backlinks → 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:

Last updated: 18 October 2026