Defence
Check backlinks to your site for planted links
Most odd links are harmless. A few are not. This is a monthly routine for telling them apart, and for knowing when doing nothing is the right verdict.
Ruling
Watch monthly, act rarely
Google has said since the December 2022 link spam update that it neutralises most spammy links automatically. Your job is to notice the unusual ones, not to clean up every low-rated domain.
- Disavow is a last resort, for a manual action or a clear pattern
- Record before you react
- Silence in the data is also a result
What a planted profile looks like
Natural profiles are messy. Brand names, bare URLs, the word "here", odd typos. A planted profile is tidy in the wrong way: dozens of links with the same commercial phrase, from domains that have nothing to do with your topic.
To check backlinks to your site properly you need two things the Search Console links report does not give together: a view that is not limited to samples, and a way to compare month against month. Pull anchors and refdomains on the same day each month and keep both files. Anything you suspect should be checked against the previous file before you decide it is new. Memory lies.
Treat the first run as a baseline, not a verdict. You are learning what normal looks like for your own domain.
Trace, meaning, response
| Trace in the data | Likely meaning | Response |
|---|---|---|
| Exact-match anchor jumps from 2% to 25% of links in one month | Planted links or a new paid campaign you forgot | Check your own order history first, then sample ten linking pages |
| Hundreds of new referrers, all DR under 10, all unrelated language | Spam run, often automated | Note it, wait one refresh, do nothing yet |
| Links to one old URL that returns 404 | Dead page that still has admirers | Redirect the URL to its nearest living page |
| A referrer you recognise vanished | Page removed or link changed | Ask the owner; this is a link-building matter, not defence |
| Links with adult or pharma words aimed at you | Hack of a third party, or negative SEO | Capture evidence, consider disavow only if rankings drop |
The monthly routine
Day 1: call the free overview
Run overview on your domain. If the DR moved by more than a few points, something changed in the referrer count. Log the date.
Day 1: pull and archive
Run refdomains sorted by rating ascending, and anchors. Save both. The cost is 4 credits in total, which is $0.0004.
Day 2: diff against last month
Compare the domain lists with a few lines of jq or a spreadsheet. List what is new, and group it by rating band and anchor wording.
Day 2: sample ten
Open ten new linking pages by hand. If they are real articles in your field, relax. If they are gibberish, note the domains in the file.
Day 3: decide
Ignore, monitor, or act. Acting means contacting an owner, or in a genuine emergency a disavow file. Write down why.
Take a site with 300 referring domains. In September the anchor cheap loans appears 3 times. In October it appears 140 times, from domains rated 5 to 9. That jump is worth a note and a one-month wait. If it grows again in November and rankings slip, you have a case for a disavow list. The figures are an example, not a measurement.
Records worth keeping
- Dated copies of refdomains and anchors for every month
- A short note for each odd cluster: what, how many, what you decided
- A log of your own paid or outreach links, so you do not accuse a stranger of your own work
- A disavow file only if you actually uploaded one, with the date
Where to go from here
If counts in two tools disagree, the troubleshooting table usually explains it. If you would like the same technique pointed at a rival, read the footprint method.
Our data refreshes about once a month and covers links, not rankings. For daily tracking of positions you will still want Search Console or a suite such as Semrush. The two answer different questions.