Semrush backlinks: the four reports, what each one answers, and the order to use them

Semrush handles backlinks through four separate tools, and knowing which one answers your question saves most of the time people spend in this part of the product. Backlink Analytics describes any domain link profile, yours or a competitor. Backlink Gap compares up to five domains and shows which sites link to them and not to you. Backlink Audit scores your own links for risk and manages removal or disavow. The Link Building Tool turns prospects into an outreach workflow with email tracking. Use them in that order: describe, compare, clean, then build. Starting with the audit is the most common mistake, because you end up cleaning a profile before you know what it should look like.

This page covers the reports and how to read them. For the audit and disavow workflow in detail, see the Semrush backlink audit. For what makes a link worth having at all, see what is a backlink.

Backlink Analytics: the describe step

Enter any domain and you get an overview plus a set of tabs. These are the ones that change decisions.

Tab	What it answers	How to use it
Overview	Authority Score, referring domains, total backlinks, follow against nofollow split, category of linking sites	The thirty second read on whether a profile is broad or built on a handful of domains
Backlinks	Every link found, with the source page, the anchor, the target page and the date first seen	Filter to follow links from new domains, then sort by the authority of the source
Referring Domains	One row per linking site rather than per link	The number that actually matters. Use the authority distribution to see whether the profile has depth
Anchors	The text used to link, grouped and counted	Check that brand and natural phrases dominate. A pile of commercial phrases is a sign of bought links
Indexed Pages	Which of their pages attract the links	The best content research in the product. It shows you what earns links in your category
Competitors	Domains with a similar link profile	A quick way to find link targets you had not considered

Two columns are worth understanding properly. Referring domains counts unique sites linking to you, and total backlinks counts every individual link, so a site wide footer link can produce thousands of backlinks from one referring domain. Always judge a profile on referring domains. Authority Score is Semrush own model built from link signals and traffic data, so use it to compare prospects against each other rather than as an absolute rating. Google has said repeatedly that it does not use third party authority metrics, and third party tools do not claim otherwise.

New and lost links, read properly

The new and lost view is the most actionable screen in Backlink Analytics and the easiest to misread. A link can appear as lost because the page was removed, because the link was taken out of the page, or because the crawler could not reach the page on that pass. So before you chase anything, open the source page. Three patterns are worth acting on:

• A lost link from a page that still exists. Worth one polite email. These are the cheapest links to recover.
• A gained link to a page that redirects or has moved. Fix the target so the link lands properly.
• A sudden burst of new links with identical anchors. Read the sources. If it looks automated, note it and move on. Search engines have spent years building systems to ignore links a site did not earn.

Backlink Gap: the compare step

Put your domain in the first field and up to four competitors in the others. The report lists referring domains and shows which of the five each one links to, so the rows where every competitor has a link and you do not are your prospect list. Three filters make it usable: show only the domains that link to at least two competitors, exclude the ones you already have, and sort by authority of the linking domain. The best prospects are usually industry publications, association pages, supplier and partner directories, and roundups that already mention everybody else in your category.

Export that list and qualify it by hand before anybody writes an email. The question for each row is simple: is there a real reason for this site to mention us. Where the answer is a page you would have to pay to appear on, read Google link spam guidance first, because paid links that pass ranking signals are the thing it specifically describes. For a comparison of how the main link indexes differ, see the best backlink analysis tool.

The Link Building Tool: the build step

This takes prospects, from the gap report or from your own list, and runs them as a pipeline: qualify, contact, follow up, mark the outcome. You can connect a mailbox and send from it, which keeps the conversation history against the prospect. It is a workflow tool rather than a source of links, and it is worth using for one reason: outreach collapses without follow up, and the pipeline makes the follow up visible. Keep the email short, say what the page is and why their readers would want it, and send one follow up rather than four.

What to pair the data with

Every third party tool shows the links its own crawler has found, and the indexes differ by region and by site size. The free second source is the Links report in Google Search Console, which is the only view of what Google itself has recorded for your site. Use Semrush for competitor work, where Search Console cannot help you, and use Search Console to sanity check your own profile. Keep a dated export each month so you can answer questions about what changed.

The semrush backlinks questions worth an answer

Is the Semrush backlink checker free?

You can run a limited number of queries a day without a paid plan, and the full reports, filters and exports sit inside the subscription. Semrush publishes the current limits per plan on its pricing page, which is the place to check before building a routine around daily exports.

What is the difference between backlinks and referring domains?

Referring domains counts each linking website once. Backlinks counts every link, so one site linking from a navigation menu can contribute a very large number of backlinks. Judge a profile and set goals on referring domains.

What is a good Authority Score?

Read it relative to your category rather than against a universal number. Pull the scores of the five sites that rank for your main terms and use that range as your reference, because it tells you what the bar in your market actually is.

How accurate is Semrush backlink data?

It reflects what its crawler has discovered, which is a large sample rather than a complete census, and the same is true of every tool in this category. It is accurate enough for the jobs on this page: comparing profiles, finding prospects and spotting change. Pair it with the Search Console Links report for your own site.

How often should I check my backlinks?

Monthly for new and lost links, quarterly for a full gap analysis, and immediately after any big content launch or press push so you can see which coverage produced links.

Does Semrush show nofollow and sponsored links?

Yes. The backlinks table carries the link attributes, so you can filter to follow links only, and the overview shows the split. Keep a natural mix rather than aiming for follow links alone, because a profile made only of follow links looks unlike anything that occurs on its own.

The other list of sources that now decides who gets named

A backlink report tells you which sites point at you. There is a second list worth having. When somebody asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude or Google AI Overviews which company to use, the reply names two or three businesses and cites the pages it drew on, and those cited pages are often directories, forums, review sites and trade publications rather than the domains in your backlink report. Those five systems answer differently and cite different sources, so a strong link profile and a mention in that answer are two separate things to work on. AI Knows Us measures which businesses those answers name in your category and which sources they cite. See how it works.