Sign inJoin the waitlist

Majestic SEO backlinks: what the data measures and how to read a report

Trust Flow, Citation Flow, the Fresh and Historic indexes, and the order to read a Majestic backlink report in.

Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 12 October 2026

Majestic is a backlink database that has been crawling the web since 2004, and its reports answer one question: which pages link to this page or site, and how much do those links carry. Look up a domain in Site Explorer, read Trust Flow against Citation Flow first, then open the referring domains list and the anchor text. That sequence takes about ten minutes and tells you more than any single score does.

What Majestic is built to do

Most SEO suites bundle backlinks with keywords, rank tracking and site audits. Majestic does the backlink job and little else. Its own site describes the company as specialists in backlink analysis, and its tool list reflects that: Site Explorer, Compare Domains, Bulk Backlinks, Search Explorer and a Developer API (majestic.com, read 12 October 2026).

That focus is the reason people use it next to another tool. If you already pay for a general suite, Majestic gives you a second link index to cross check against. The same logic is covered in our guide to picking a backlink analysis tool by the job.

The metrics, in plain words

Trust Flow

Majestic describes Trust Flow as a measure of the quality of backlinks to a URL or website. A page with a higher Trust Flow than Citation Flow is typically associated with high quality links (majestic.com, 12 October 2026). The idea is that trust travels from a set of trusted seed sites through the links they give out.

Citation Flow

Citation Flow reflects the quantity of links pointing at a site. It does not separate good links from bad ones. A site can have a big Citation Flow built on thousands of low value links.

The two together

The useful reading is the gap. A Trust Flow close to Citation Flow suggests the links come from sites that are themselves linked to by trusted sites. A Citation Flow far above Trust Flow is a prompt to open the referring domains list and see why. Treat the pair as a flag that tells you where to look, then confirm by reading the actual linking pages.

Topical Trust Flow

Topical Trust Flow compares a site with the best sites in more than 800 categories, according to Majestic, which gives a view of topical relevance. A law firm whose strongest Topical Trust Flow sits under Business or Society is getting links from the right neighbourhood. One whose strongest category is Recreation or Shopping is not.

Fresh Index and Historic Index

Majestic runs two indexes, and choosing the wrong one is the commonest source of confusion between Majestic numbers and numbers from other tools.

  • Fresh Index. A rolling window of recent crawling. On 12 October 2026 the Fresh Index figures showed a date range of 14 June 2026 to 12 October 2026. New and lost links are reported best here, with filters for a given day or period.
  • Historic Index. A long archive. The same page showed a range of 6 June 2006 to 17 February 2024, last updated 23 March 2024. Majestic lists Historic Index use under its PRO plan.

Use Fresh for anything about now: a link won last month, a link lost, a campaign that just ended. Use Historic when you want the full link history of an older domain, for example one you are about to buy or one that has been through a redesign.

A ten minute read of any domain

  1. Enter the domain in Site Explorer and choose the Fresh Index. Note Trust Flow, Citation Flow and the count of referring domains.
  2. Open the Topics view and check that the top Topical Trust Flow categories match what the site does.
  3. Open referring domains and sort by Trust Flow. The top twenty tell you who is actually vouching for the site.
  4. Open anchor text. Branded and URL anchors should dominate. A profile where one money phrase repeats on dozens of domains reads as bought.
  5. Switch to new and lost links for the last month. This is the trend line, and it matters more than the totals.
  6. Run the same steps on two competitors and compare. Compare Domains puts them on one screen.

Why the numbers differ from other tools

Each provider crawls a different slice of the web, so counts will not match across tools. Majestic's Trust Flow and Citation Flow are its own scales. They sit alongside Domain Rating from Ahrefs and Authority Score from Semrush rather than converting into them. Pick one scale per decision and compare like with like. Our pieces on the Ahrefs backlink checker and the Semrush backlink reports show how those two present the same question.

You want to knowMajestic viewIndex
Who links to a competitor nowReferring domains, sorted by Trust FlowFresh
Which links appeared or vanished this monthNew and lost linksFresh
Whether the links come from relevant sitesTopical Trust FlowFresh
The long history of an older domainLink profile over timeHistoric
Where a competitor has links you lackCompare DomainsFresh

What to do with the findings

A report is worth what you do after it. Take the strong referring domains that link to two or three competitors but not to you. Those sites already cover your topic and already link out, so they are your outreach list. How links work and what makes one valuable sets out what a good target looks like, and vetting a link building company helps if you hand the work out. A provider offering guaranteed rankings from links is selling you something else, since Google itself says nobody can guarantee a position.

Reading anchor text and link context

Anchor text is the clickable words of a link, and Majestic lets you see the spread across your whole profile. A healthy profile is dominated by the brand name, the web address and plain phrases such as "this guide". Exact match phrases for a commercial term, repeated on many unrelated sites, are the pattern that attracts attention from Google's spam systems. When you see it, trace each one back to the page and the person who placed it.

Link context goes one step further. Majestic's Link Context reports on Fresh Index data show where on the linking page your link sits: inside the body text, in a sidebar, in a footer. An editorial link in the body of a relevant article is worth chasing. A link in a footer repeated across a whole network of sites is the kind to leave alone.

The answer an assistant gives about you sits outside Majestic

Majestic shows who links to you on the open web. Buyers also ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity which provider to choose, and the answer names a few businesses from the sources the assistant read. Trust Flow does not tell you whether you are one of them. The way to find out is to ask the buyer's question in each assistant and note who is named and which sites are cited. AI Knows Us runs that comparison, and its free scan at aiknowsus.com puts your result next to your link profile.

Questions about Majestic backlink data

Is Majestic free?

Majestic offers a free sign up and paid plans for the full tools. Check its plans and pricing page for the current limits, because they change.

What is a good Trust Flow score?

There is no fixed good number. Compare your Trust Flow with the sites that rank for your target queries, and watch the gap between Trust Flow and Citation Flow.

Does Google use Trust Flow?

No. Trust Flow is Majestic's own metric. Use it as a comparison tool, not as a ranking factor.

Should I use the Fresh or Historic Index?

Fresh for current work and link monitoring, Historic for the long history of an older domain.

Can Majestic find toxic links?

It shows low trust links and unnatural anchor patterns, which is the evidence you need. Read the linking pages themselves before deciding what to act on.

Read next

AI Visibility Audit Deliverables for a UK Agency: The Five Artefacts, and Why the Zero Column Is One of ThemWhat a British agency should hand a client at the end of an audit, including the findings that did not survive a second reading.A Workflow Standard for AI Search Optimisation: Six Stations, and Who Owns Each OneThe execution sequence an Indian agency can hold a team to, measured against what our own site serves eleven named crawlers.The Multi Engine AI Citation Audit Framework: One Column Per Engine, Never a Blended ScoreA reproducible audit design for an Indian agency, built from 1,260 readings on 16 October 2026 and the 597 that came eleven days before it.A Small UK Agency Against a Large Consultancy on AI Search Optimisation: What the Citation Data Says Each One Can OwnThree British agency domains took dozens of citations each in our readings, and none of them is a large firm. Here is what that result does and does not tell a ten person shop.Build or Buy an AI Visibility Stack: The Five Silent Wrong Answers an In House Build ProducesWhat it actually takes to run a multi engine tracker yourself, measured from the defects in our own build, with rupee prices for the alternative.AI Search Optimisation and SEO in India: What Each One Costs, and What Each Return Is Counted InMost of the production work is already inside your search invoice, two budget lines are genuinely new, and the two results are counted in units that cannot be divided by each other.

Or browse the whole archive.

See what AI says about you.

The first scan is free, it needs no account, and it asks the questions your buyers ask.

Free. No card. We ask 5 real buyer questions on 2 AI apps.

Already sure you want this? Join the waitlist. We open on 31 October 2026. It costs an email address. No card, and nothing is charged. Or talk to a person if you have a question first. Or read how we fix what it finds.