How to Check If My Website Has Backlinks?

If you have never checked, you may not know whether any other site links to yours. The good news is that it takes only a few minutes to find out. This guide shows the quickest ways to check whether your website has backlinks, what the results mean and what to do with them.

Start with Google Search Console

Google Search Console is free and shows data straight from Google. After you verify your site, open the Links report. You will see:

• External links. Top linked pages, top linking sites and top linking text.
• Internal links. How your own pages link to each other.

Search Console does not list every backlink, and it samples the data it shows, but it is the best free starting point. It also reflects links Google has actually discovered, which is the information that matters most. If you have not verified your site yet, do that first. Verification proves you own the site, and Google walks you through several simple methods.

What the Links report tells you

Look at three views.

1. Top linking sites. These are the domains that link to you most. Scan for sites you recognise and sites that look odd.
2. Top linked pages. This shows which of your pages attract links. You may find that an old blog post is doing most of the work.
3. Top linking text. The anchor text used by other sites. A natural profile has a lot of brand and URL anchors and relatively few exact-match phrases.

If the report is empty or very short, that usually means your site has few links or is new. It does not mean your site is penalised.

Use a backlink checker for more detail

Third-party SEO tools crawl the web and build their own link databases. They show more links than Search Console, plus useful data such as referring domains, link type, anchor text, new and lost links and estimated authority. Different tools discover different links, so numbers will not match exactly. For this reason, it is worth comparing two sources if the decision matters. A good routine is to use Search Console for ground truth and one paid tool for depth.

Many tools offer limited free checks. They usually show a few top links, which is enough to answer the simple question of whether anyone links to you. For a full backlinks analysis, you will need a paid plan or an agency that provides reports. We explain the process step by step in how to find out what backlinks a website has.

Check manually with Google search

You can also look for mentions yourself.

• Search for your brand name in quotes and see which sites mention you.
• Search for your domain name in quotes to find pages that mention it.
• Use a reverse image search for your logo or original images to find sites that reuse them.

A mention without a link is an opportunity. Polite outreach asking the writer to turn it into a link often works, because the writer already likes what you do.

Check referral traffic in Google Analytics

Backlinks that send visitors show up in your analytics. In Google Analytics, open the traffic acquisition report and look at referral sources. A site that sends real visitors is a healthy link. This does not find every backlink, but it shows which links actually bring people to your site. See how to find backlinks in Google Analytics for the steps. You can read about the product itself on the Google Analytics site.

How to read the results

Once you have a list, ask a few simple questions.

• How many referring domains do you have? A small number is normal for a new site. Growth over time is a good sign.
• Are the links relevant? Links from sites in your industry carry more weight than random ones.
• Do any links look suspicious? Look for casino, adult or pharma pages with no connection to you, and for pages that are only lists of links. See toxic backlinks if you find some.
• Which pages are linked? If only your homepage has links, your content pages may need attention.

What to do next

Based on what you find, pick a direction.

1. No links or very few. Start earning some. A beginner’s plan might include guest posts, link insertions and a few relationship-based links. Our guest posting services are one route, and you approve each site before anything is published.
2. A decent profile. Look for gaps compared to competitors and set monthly goals. Backlinks management can be as simple as a spreadsheet that records the source, the target page and the date.
3. Some bad links. Document them. Most low-quality links are ignored by search engines, and the disavow tool is only needed in specific cases. See how to disavow backlinks in Google Search Console.

Make checking a habit

A one-time check is useful, but backlinks change. New links appear, old ones disappear, and pages get edited. Set a reminder to review your links monthly. If you want to automate it, many tools can email you when you win or lose a link. Our guide on how to monitor backlinks covers this.

Common questions

Why does my tool show fewer links than my competitor? The competitor may have been around longer, or have a different mix of link-building methods. Compare referring domains and link quality, not raw totals.

Why are some links missing? No tool crawls the whole web. A new link might not appear for days or weeks.

Do I need a paid tool? Not at the start. Search Console is enough to answer whether you have backlinks. Paid tools help when you want deeper analysis, competitor comparisons and alerts.

If you prefer to learn by video, the Google Search Central YouTube channel publishes practical explainers on how Google Search handles links, crawling and indexing.

Getting help if you need more links

If your check shows that few sites link to you, you can browse relevant publishers on our buy backlinks page, or see how a steady monthly plan works in our link building packages.

Key takeaways

• Google Search Console is the best free way to see who links to you.
• Third-party tools show more links and extra data, but they never show everything.
• Manual brand searches and Analytics referrals fill in gaps.
• Review your links regularly, and focus on relevance and quality.
• If you need more links, choose methods that you can explain and defend.