Check Backlinks: What a Backlink Check Shows on 2,721 Sites

How to check backlinks

There are three ways to see the links pointing to a site, and each answers a slightly different question:

• Google Search Console, for your own site. Its Links report lists the sites that link to you most, your most-linked pages and their anchor text. It is free, it is Google's own view, and Google notes it isn't a list of every link.
• A backlink index, for any site. SEO tools crawl the web and keep their own link databases, so each counts a different slice and their totals disagree. mxverify's free backlink checker shows one index's counts for any site, beside what a link from that site is worth.
• An audit, for links you placed. Opening each page tells you whether your link is still there and how it is marked; a bklink audit does that for a whole list.

This report runs the second kind of check on every site mxverify has a report for, and reads what the counts say.

What we measured

One backlink reading per site, from a third-party backlink index read for mxverify in September 2026 and October 2026: 2,721 of the 3,568 sites with a report on 23 October 2026. Each reading counts the registered domains linking to the site, how many of them have nofollow links to it, the links in all, the IP addresses and subnets they come from, the index's spam score and where on the linking pages the links sit.

The short answer

A link count is not a link's worth

The most-linked sites are worth the most a link, but the middle of the table does not climb: sites with 10 to 99 linking sites were worth less a link ($2.99) than the few with under 10 ($16). 87% of them are priced at level C or D — press-release copies, profiles, nofollow links or one-owner networks — whatever their count. BV does not price on any of these counts; it reads the site's authority rating, its traffic and the kind of link it gives (how BV is worked out).

What to read in a backlink check

• Nofollow share. For the median site, 37% of the websites linking to it had nofollow links to it, and on 770 sites it was more than half. A high count that is mostly nofollow says little about rankings.
• Links per linking site. The median site had 4.7 links from each site linking to it. 473 sites had over 100: usually one site linking from every page, in a header, sidebar or footer, which counts as one website, not hundreds.
• Where the links sit. For the median site, 25% of its links sat in the article or main content of the linking page; on 324 of 2,545 sites with enough links sorted, most did. The rest were in headers, menus, sidebars and footers, or nowhere the index could name.
• Addresses. Linking sites spread across many addresses: the median site had 1.12 linking sites per IP address. Many sites linking from few addresses is a sign of a link farm; 138 sites had two or more linking sites per address.
• Spam score. The index's spam score is the average of the linking pages', 0 to 100. The median site scored 26, and 1,010 (37%) scored 30 or more. It is one index's model, not Google's.

How to check a site's backlinks before you get a link from it

1. Run it through a backlink checker — mxverify's free backlink checker or any index — and read the counts above, not just the total.
2. Open a few linking pages. Are they real articles on real sites, or footers and profile pages?
3. Check what a link from the site is worth, beside what it asks: the same report gives its BV.
4. For a link you placed, check the page itself, now and again later; a backlink index updates on its own schedule.

Method and limits

• One index, one reading per site. Counts differ between indexes; these come from one, read once a month for mxverify, and count registered domains, so a site's subdomains count once.
• No reading is an all-zero answer from the index, left out. Not every site with a report has a reading yet.
• The spam score and placement are the index's own readings. Placement is shown for sites with 100 or more links sorted.
• BV is BV 2.8, the figure each report shows. It does not price on these counts.