RankNest

Competitor Backlinks

Compare backlink profiles, see who links to a competitor, find sites that link to them but not to your client, and watch the trend build.

Backlinks are links to a site from other websites. Search engines treat them as a sign of trust, so the sites that outrank your client often have more of them, or better ones. The Backlinks and Backlink gap tabs on the Competitors page show you each site's link profile and turn the difference into an outreach list.

If you haven't saved any competitors yet, start with the Competitors Overview.

Open the Backlinks tab and choose a site from the Site picker. The client's own site is listed first, marked (this client). The site you pick here is the same one selected on the Overview tab, so switching on one tab switches the other.

Every panel on this tab loads on demand. Each button shows how many research reports it uses before you click, and results you've loaded recently are usually free to view again.

Click Load backlink summary. Four cards appear:

  • Referring domains: how many different sites link to this one. The change beside it is new referring domains minus lost ones.
  • Backlinks: the total number of links. The change is new minus lost, and a note shows how many are broken, if any.
  • New referring domains: sites that started linking recently.
  • Lost referring domains: sites that stopped linking recently.

When a domain rank is available, it appears at the top right of the tab as Domain rank. It is an estimate of the site's link strength; higher is stronger.

Referring domains

Click Load referring domains to list the 100 strongest sites linking here. The table shows each Domain, its Rank, how many Links it has to the site, and when it was First seen.

Click Load backlinks to list the strongest link from each linking site. Each row shows:

  • Linking page: the site and page the link sits on. Click it to open the page.
  • Anchor text: the clickable words of the link, or No text when the link has none.
  • Type: Follow links pass authority to the site. Nofollow links ask search engines not to. A Lost label means the link has gone.
  • Rank: the strength of the linking site.
  • Links to: the page on the site the link points at.

RankNest doesn't pull a backlink history in one go. Instead, every time a backlink summary loads for a site, RankNest saves that day's figures. At most one point is kept per site per day.

Once a site has two or more saved days, the Referring domains and Backlinks cards show a trend line, and Referring domains notes how many saved checks the line is built from. The trend covers roughly the last six months.

The line grows as you use the page. Loading the client's summary on the days you check in, or letting it load automatically (see the Competitors Overview), builds a picture of the client's link growth over time.

Note: A trend with gaps is normal. A point only exists for the days someone loaded that site's backlink summary.

A backlink gap is every site that links to a competitor but not to your client. Those sites already link to businesses like your client's, which makes them the most promising people to contact for a link.

  1. Open the Backlink gap tab.
  2. Choose a site from the Competitor picker.
  3. Choose how many of the competitor's linking sites to compare from the Compare picker: Their top 100, Their top 500, or Their top 1,000. Larger comparisons use more reports.
  4. Click Find link opportunities. The button shows how many reports it uses.

The results list each Linking site, its Rank, how many Links to them it has, and when it was First seen, strongest first. Click a site to open it in a new tab.

Sites that AI answers also cite for the client's tracked prompts carry a Cited by AI label with a count, and they sort to the top. Those sites matter to both search and AI answers, so they are worth contacting first. See Reading AI Visibility Results.

Use Filter domains to narrow the list, and Copy domains to copy every listed domain to your clipboard, one per line, ready for an outreach sheet.

Note: Very large link profiles are sampled by strength, not listed in full. The gap shows the strongest opportunities, not every site on the web that links to the competitor.

Troubleshooting

"Every site we found linking to them already links to this site too." The client already has links from all the competitor's strongest linking sites in the sample. Try a larger Compare size or a different competitor.

"No backlinks found." or "No referring domains found." The site has very few links from other websites. This is common for new sites.

No trend line on the cards. The site has fewer than two days of saved backlink summaries. Load the summary again on another day.

Last updated 2026-09-25