DataForSEO Brain

Play: Backlink Audit

4 min read

Play: Backlink Audit

Profile a domain’s link graph, find toxic and lost links, and produce a cleanup/outreach list from DataForSEO’s own backlink index. Sits under DataForSEO Brain → Flows.

Overview

This audit reads a target’s backlink profile end-to-end: the headline metrics, the referring-domain roster, anchor distribution, link velocity (new vs lost), and spam scoring. All endpoints are Live-only and draw on DataForSEO’s proprietary backlink crawler/index, so the numbers are vendor-native rather than Google-sourced. The output is a disavow/cleanup candidate list plus a baseline for ongoing monitoring.

Trigger

A domain needs a link-health review: a penalty investigation, an M&A due-diligence check, a quarterly health snapshot, or a competitor link comparison. Input is a single target (domain, subdomain, or full page URL).

Endpoints used (in order)

  • POST /v3/backlinks/summary/live (profile overview).
  • POST /v3/backlinks/referring_domains/live (the referring-domain roster).
  • POST /v3/backlinks/anchors/live (anchor-text distribution).
  • POST /v3/backlinks/bulk_new_lost_backlinks/live (link velocity / churn).
  • POST /v3/backlinks/bulk_spam_score/live (spam score for up to 1,000 targets).
  • POST /v3/backlinks/history/live and /timeseries_summary/live (trend context).

Pipeline

  1. Run summary on the target. Read backlinks, referring_domains, referring_main_domains, rank, backlinks_spam_score, broken_backlinks, and the distribution objects (referring_links_types, referring_links_attributes, referring_links_tld, referring_links_countries). Set backlinks_status_type to live, lost, or all depending on scope.
  2. Pull the referring-domain roster with referring_domains (default 100, max 1,000 per request; page with offset). Sort by rank and backlinks_spam_score; use filters (max 8) to isolate high-spam or nofollow-only domains.
  3. Audit anchors with anchors to spot over-optimized or spammy anchor patterns (money-keyword stuffing is a manual-action signal).
  4. Measure velocity with bulk_new_lost_backlinks to see whether the profile is gaining or shedding links; sudden loss spikes flag a problem, sudden gains may flag a negative-SEO attack.
  5. Score toxicity: feed the suspect referring domains/pages (up to 1,000 per call) into bulk_spam_score to get the 0-100 spam_score per target in one billed request.
  6. Build the cleanup list: domains/pages above your spam threshold with low rank become disavow candidates; broken backlinks pointing at the target become reclamation candidates.
  7. Add trend context with history/timeseries_summary for a month-over-month chart, and re-run on a schedule to monitor.

Cost & cadence

  • Backlinks endpoints are Live-only and billed per request; pricing is on the Backlinks API page (per-row plus per-request components).
  • Bulk endpoints are the cost lever: bulk_spam_score scores up to 1,000 targets in one billed request rather than 1,000 separate calls. The same applies to bulk ranks and bulk new/lost.
  • Since 2026-07-01, the Backlinks API is pay-as-you-go with no subscription or activation step. The backlinks_subscription_expiry_date field in user_data is legacy and irrelevant for access; 2026-07-08 probes returned 20000 Ok for summary/live and bulk_ranks/live.
  • Cadence: full audit on demand; monitoring (summary + new/lost) weekly or monthly.

Output

A backlink audit pack: profile summary metrics, ranked referring-domain table, anchor distribution, new/lost velocity chart, and a prioritized disavow + reclamation list. Feeds play-competitor-gap-analysis for link-gap work.

Pitfalls / limits

  • No Backlinks API subscription is required. Check user_data for balance and limits before running, not for access.
  • include_subdomains, include_indirect_links, and exclude_internal_backlinks all default to true and materially change counts; set them deliberately and keep them consistent across runs.
  • rank_scale defaults to one_thousand; switch to one_hundred if your reporting expects 0-100.
  • Rate ceiling is 2,000 calls/min and max 30 simultaneous Live requests; max 1,000 items per page and 1,000 targets per bulk call.
  • Spam score is DataForSEO’s own metric, not Google’s; treat it as a triage signal, not a verdict.

Decisions in play

Sources

Graph View

Backlinks