The short version: A competitor backlink search means running their domain through a tool like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz Link Explorer, pulling the full list of sites linking to them, then sorting that list for quality rather than quantity. Most of what you find will be useless. The job is finding the small percentage that moved their rankings and working out how they got it.
Why you'd bother doing this in the first place
I get asked this at least once a month by a client who has just spotted a rival outranking them for a keyword they care about. The instinct is always the same: "they must have loads of backlinks, let's get some too." Sometimes that's true. Often it isn't. I've had clients with fewer, better backlinks beat a competitor sitting on three times the number.
Still, checking a competitor's backlink profile is one of the fastest ways to find link opportunities you'd never have thought of on your own. Someone has already done the outreach, already convinced a journalist or blogger or directory owner to link out. Your job is to find that same opportunity and get your own link on it too, or find something better.
The tools that do this job
You cannot see a competitor's backlinks through Google Search Console, that only shows your own site's data. You need a third party crawler that has already indexed the web's link graph. There are really only a handful worth using in 2026:
- Ahrefs - the industry standard for this specific job, Site Explorer shows referring domains, anchor text, and a Domain Rating score for every linking site. Paid plans start around $129 a month, but the free backlink checker shows you the top 100 links to any domain, which is enough to get a feel for a competitor.
- Semrush - very similar functionality, plus a Backlink Gap tool that lines up several competitors side by side so you can see who links to them but not to you.
- Moz Link Explorer - a smaller index than Ahrefs or Semrush but a useful free tier if you're just starting out and don't want to pay for anything yet.
- Ubersuggest - cheaper, decent for a first pass, though the data lags behind the bigger two by weeks or sometimes months.
If you've never used any of these before, I've written a longer explainer on what backlinks are and how they work that's worth reading first, it makes the rest of this a lot easier to follow.
The step by step process I use
Here's exactly what I do with a client, using Ahrefs as the example since that's what most agencies including mine run on:
- Pick two or three real competitors, not aspirational ones. Don't check the backlinks of the biggest brand in your industry if you're a five person company, their profile will be built on decades of PR and press coverage you can't replicate. Pick businesses your actual size that are outranking you for keywords you want.
- Drop their domain into Site Explorer. You'll land on the Overview tab, which shows total backlinks, referring domains, and Domain Rating straight away.
- Click into the Backlinks report. This is the full list, every single link the tool has found pointing at that domain.
- Filter for dofollow links only and sort by Domain Rating, highest first. Nofollow links can still send traffic but they pass far less ranking value, so start with the ones that matter more.
- Export the list to a spreadsheet. You want columns for the linking domain, its DR, the anchor text used, and the target URL on the competitor's site.
- Run a Link Intersect (or Backlink Gap in Semrush). This shows sites that link to two or three competitors but not to you. These are gold, if a site has already linked to multiple businesses in your space, they're clearly open to linking to people like you.
- Go and look at every site by eye before you contact anyone. This is the step almost everyone skips.
A quick real example
I worked with a kitchen fitting company in Leeds who were convinced a local competitor's 340 referring domains were the reason they kept losing the top spot for "kitchen fitters Leeds." We pulled the competitor's backlink list and went through it by hand. Roughly half of those 340 domains turned out to be low quality directory sites, all hosted on the same handful of IP addresses, clearly part of a bought link package someone had sold them years earlier. The links that were doing work were about 40 domains: a mention in the Yorkshire Evening Post, a listing on a local trade association site, two home renovation blogs, and a supplier's "recommended fitters" page. That's the real list. The other 300 were noise sitting in a spreadsheet doing nothing for anyone's rankings, and possibly dragging the competitor's trust score down rather than up.
That's the bit most backlink guides skip over. A competitor having more backlinks than you tells you almost nothing on its own. I've seen sites with 1,200 referring domains outranked by sites with 90, because the 90 were relevant, from real sites with real traffic, earned through genuine coverage rather than bought in bulk. If you want a sense of what's a reasonable target for your own site rather than theirs, I've broken that down in how many backlinks a website should realistically have in 2026.
What to look at once you've got the list
Once the spreadsheet is in front of you, ignore the total count entirely and check these instead:
- Does the linking site get real traffic? A high DR score means nothing if the site itself has no visitors and no audience. Check it in Ahrefs' traffic estimate or just visit the site and read three articles, does it look alive.
- Is the link relevant to your industry? A link from a random tech blog to a plumbing company means very little to Google, however high the DR.
- What anchor text is being used? If a competitor has 40 links all using the exact phrase "best accountants in Manchester," that's a red flag for manipulation, not a strategy to copy.
- When were the links built? A cluster of 60 links appearing in the same month usually means a paid campaign or a link buying spree, not organic growth. It's a pattern worth noticing, and one reason I'd point you to whether buying backlinks is worth it before you get tempted to shortcut the process yourself.
- Is the link still live? Tools sometimes show historical links that have since been removed. Click through and check.
Turning the list into something useful
Once you've filtered the noise out, you're left with a shortlist of maybe 20 to 50 good link sources. Split them into three groups:
- Easy wins - directories, business listings, and association sites that will list you for free or a small fee once you apply, the same way they listed your competitor.
- Outreach targets - blogs, journalists, and niche sites that published something about your competitor and might do the same for you, especially if you can offer a different angle or newer data.
- Long shots - big publications or high authority sites that linked to a competitor as part of a wider story. These are worth a pitch but don't expect a fast reply.
For the outreach targets, don't just copy what your competitor did. Find something they missed. If they got a link from a local paper for opening a shop, pitch that same journalist a different story, a milestone, a local hire, a charity partnership, something new. Editors remember lazy pitches that copy an old story angle.
If you'd rather build fresh links than chase a competitor's old ones, there's a decent list of no cost starting points in free backlink opportunities for your website, and a full walkthrough of the outreach side in how to build backlinks the right way.
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Where people go wrong with this
The mistake I see most often is treating a competitor backlink search as a one off task rather than something you check every quarter. Backlink profiles shift constantly, sites go offline, new pages get published, old partnerships end. A list you pulled six months ago is already out of date.
The second mistake, and the uncomfortable one nobody likes admitting, is that a lot of what agencies sell as "competitor link replication" is really just a padded report. I've seen proposals promising to get a client "the same 50 links" a competitor has, when a third of those links were low quality directories the competitor themselves would probably remove if they could. Chasing quantity to match a rival's spreadsheet is how businesses end up with a folder full of links that do nothing and, in the worst cases, attract a Google manual action. Match the good ones. Leave the junk where it is.
If you're weighing up whether to bring in outside help for this rather than doing it yourself with a spreadsheet and a Tuesday afternoon, it's worth reading through what an AI consultant for small business would do differently, since a lot of this analysis can now be sped up considerably with the right prompts and tools, provided a human still checks the output by eye.
Try my free tool that estimates a site's Google traffic before you post.
If you want every free method in one place, here is my full guide on how to check your website's backlinks for free.
If you're checking someone else's site, see how to check a site's backlinks for free.
Frequently asked questions
Can I check a competitor's backlinks for free?
Yes, to a point. Ahrefs' free backlink checker shows the top 100 links to any domain, and Moz Link Explorer has a free tier as well. For a full picture with export and filtering options, you'll need a paid plan, but the free versions are enough to get a first read on whether it's worth digging further.
How many of a competitor's backlinks are worth copying?
In most profiles I've reviewed, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of a competitor's backlinks are doing any real work. The rest are directories, expired partnerships, scraped content, or old paid placements. Filter for relevance and real traffic before you build an outreach list, not domain count alone.
Is it against Google's rules to copy a competitor's backlinks?
No. Studying a competitor's link profile and pitching the same sites is normal competitive research, plenty of legitimate PR and marketing agencies do exactly this. What breaks the rules is buying links in bulk or joining link schemes to replicate a number artificially rather than earning coverage the same way your competitor did.
How often should I run this kind of check?
Quarterly is a sensible rhythm for most small businesses. Backlink profiles change often enough that a check from six months ago is already stale, but checking weekly is overkill unless you're actively in the middle of an outreach campaign.
