Backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking signals in Google’s algorithm. A study of nearly a billion web pages found a clear correlation between the number of unique websites linking to a page and how much organic traffic it receives.

Generally speaking, the more backlinks a page has from unique websites, the better it performs in search engines.

But here’s the part most people miss: backlinks don’t just help you rank on Google. The pages that earn the most high-quality links also tend to be the ones that AI search engines cite most often. That’s because tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity pull from well-linked, authoritative sources when generating answers. So every link you earn compounds across both channels.

In this article, you’ll learn how to find every website that links to yours, how to evaluate whether those links actually help your SEO, and—most importantly—what to do with that information to get more traffic from both search engines and AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

How to Find Who Links to Your Website

There are two main ways to see who links to your site. One is free but limited. The other gives you the full picture.

1. Google Search Console (Free)

Google Search Console is the best starting point for most site owners because it’s free and the data comes directly from Google.

If you haven’t set it up yet, create a free account and verify your site. It takes about five minutes.

Once you’re in, navigate to:

Search Console > choose your property > Links > External links > Top linking sites

This report shows the top 1,000 websites linking to your site, plus two metrics for each:

Linking pages — how many of their pages link to your website.

Target pages — how many of your pages they’re linking to.

The report sorts by linking pages by default, but you can also sort by target pages to see which sites link to the widest range of your content.

Click any website on the list to see the specific pages they link to and how many times.

Click any of those target pages to drill down further and see the exact referring pages from which the links originate.

Finding your top linked pages

There’s a second report in Search Console that shows which of your pages attract the most links.

Navigate to: Search Console > Links > External links > Top linked pages

This report is sorted by incoming links by default. That shows you which pages have the most total backlinks. But total backlinks can be misleading because ten links from the same website are generally less valuable than ten links from ten different websites.

Sort by Linking sites instead. That’s a much more useful view because it shows which of your pages are linked to by the most unique domains.

From here, you can click any page to see the top linking sites to that specific URL, and then click any linking site to see every referring page.

You can download any of these reports by clicking the download icon in the top right corner. Export as CSV for further analysis.

The limitations of Google Search Console

Search Console is a solid starting point, but it has three significant blind spots:

To fill in those gaps, you need a dedicated backlink analysis tool.

Side note: Bing Webmaster Tools also provides some backlink data for free. It’s worth checking if you want a second data source, but it has similar limitations to Search Console.

2. Using a Backlink Analysis Tool

Dedicated SEO tools maintain their own indexes of the web by constantly crawling and recrawling billions of pages. This gives them far more comprehensive link data than Google Search Console provides.

To check who links to any website (including sites you don’t own), plug the domain, subfolder, or specific URL into a backlink analysis tool and review the overview report.

The first thing you’ll see is a high-level summary: total backlinks, referring domains (unique linking websites), and quality metrics like domain rating.

A critical distinction worth understanding: backlinks and referring domains are not the same thing. One website can link to you hundreds of times, but that counts as just one referring domain. When evaluating your link profile, referring domains is almost always the more meaningful number.

The Referring Domains report

This is the most useful report for understanding who links to you. It shows every unique website linking to your target, along with:

Domain Rating (DR) — a metric that scores the strength of a website’s backlink profile on a scale of 0 to 100. Higher is stronger.

Dofollow vs. nofollow links — dofollow links pass ranking power. Nofollow links tell search engines not to count the link as a vote. (Though Google treats nofollow as a “hint,” not a directive.)

Estimated organic traffic — how much search traffic the linking domain receives. A site with healthy organic traffic is generally a more trustworthy linker than one with zero traffic.

First seen — when the tool first detected the link. Useful for spotting trends in when you’re earning or losing links.

To see the actual backlinks from each linking website, click the expand arrow next to any domain. This reveals the specific referring pages, anchor text, and target URLs.

The Backlinks report

For a complete, flat list of every individual backlink, use the Backlinks report. Each row shows the linking page, the anchor text used, the surrounding context, the target URL on your site, and quality metrics for the referring page.

By default, most tools group similar backlinks together so you only see unique links. You can toggle this to see all backlinks or one link per domain, depending on your analysis needs.

This report also has powerful filters. You can narrow by link type (dofollow only), anchor text, referring domain rating, language, and more. These filters become essential when you move from “who links to me?” to “what should I do about it?”

What to Do Next: 6 Tactics to Turn Link Data Into Results

Knowing who links to you is step one. But a list of linking domains is just raw data—it’s what you do with that data that actually improves your rankings and traffic.

Here are six practical tactics, ordered from easiest to most advanced.

1. Build Relationships with Your Serial Linkers

Some websites link to you over and over. These are your serial linkers—sites that have linked to multiple pages on your domain, often across different articles over time.

These are your most valuable link sources. Not because each individual link is necessarily the strongest, but because the people behind these sites clearly trust your content. They already know you, and they’ve demonstrated a willingness to reference your work.

To find them in Google Search Console, go to the Top linking sites report and sort by target pages from high to low.

Ignore social networking sites (LinkedIn, Facebook), forums (Reddit), and other sites where the links are user-generated content. Focus on the editorial sites—industry blogs, news sites, and resource pages where someone actively chose to link to you.

The next step is simple: maintain those relationships. Follow these people on social media. Share their content. Reply to their posts. Send them a genuine note when they publish something great. These small gestures keep you top of mind the next time they’re writing about your topic.

Take it further: find your competitors’ serial linkers

Here’s where this tactic gets powerful. Your competitors have serial linkers too. And those are people who care deeply about your industry but may not know your site exists yet.

To find them, plug a competing domain into a backlink analysis tool, open the Referring Domains report, filter for dofollow links, and sort by number of links to the target from high to low.

Look for domains that link to your competitor five, ten, or twenty times. These are the sites that consistently reference your competitor as a trusted source.

Now check whether any of those domains also link to you. If they don’t, that’s a relationship worth building. Start engaging with their content. Comment thoughtfully on their articles. And when the timing is right, pitch a collaboration—a guest post, a data-share, or simply an introduction to a piece of your content they’d find genuinely useful.

Action tip: People link to people they know and like. Nurture relationships with your own serial linkers, and build new ones with your competitors’ serial linkers.

2. Learn from Your Most Linked Content

Link building works best when you have content people actually want to link to. But the type of content that earns links varies wildly by niche.

Infographics don’t always win. Neither do studies. The best way to figure out what works in your space is to look at what’s already working—both on your site and your competitors’.

Start with your own site. In Google Search Console, go to Top linked pages and sort by Linking sites (not incoming links). This shows which of your pages earn links from the most unique domains.

Look for patterns. Are your most linked pages how-to guides? Original research? Free tools? Templates? Once you spot the pattern, double down on that format.

Now do the same thing for your competitors. In a backlink analysis tool, enter a competing domain and open the Best by Links report. Add a “200 OK” filter to exclude redirected or dead pages.

This report shows you which of your competitor’s pages earn the most links. Study the top results. What format are they? (Calculators, statistics posts, templates, tools.) What topics do they cover? What makes them link-worthy?

For example, if you run a finance blog and your competitor’s most linked pages are all mortgage calculators and credit score statistics pages, that tells you exactly what format to invest in next. If you run a SaaS blog and their most linked pages are comparison posts and industry benchmarks, you know where to focus your production efforts.

Action tip: Learn what kinds of content attract links in your niche and create more of it. Don’t guess—let the data tell you.

What earns “links” in AI search?

Here’s an interesting parallel: just as some content formats earn more backlinks than others, some content formats earn more AI citations than others.

AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude don’t use backlinks the way Google does. Instead, they cite sources directly in their responses. The pages they cite most often tend to share a few traits: they’re comprehensive, well-structured, and provide clear answers to specific questions.

You can see which of your pages get cited by AI engines using Analyze AI. The Sources dashboard shows every URL that AI platforms cite when answering questions in your industry—broken down by content type (blog, website, product page, review, etc.) and by which domains get cited most frequently.

This is the AI equivalent of the “Best by Links” report. Instead of seeing which pages earn the most backlinks, you’re seeing which pages earn the most AI citations. And the patterns are often different. A page that ranks well in Google because of backlinks might not get cited by ChatGPT at all—and vice versa.

To dig deeper, you can filter by specific AI model (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, etc.) to see how citation patterns vary across platforms.

Drill into the URLs tab to see the specific pages being cited, what content type they are, which brands are mentioned alongside them, and how often each URL is used as a source.

The takeaway is the same as with backlinks: find what’s already working and do more of it. If AI engines cite your blog posts far more than your product pages, invest more in blog content that answers the prompts your audience asks. If they cite comparison pages heavily, create more comparison content.

3. Reclaim the Value from Broken Links

Have you ever clicked a link and landed on a 404 error page? Broken pages aren’t just bad for user experience. They’re bad for your SEO in a very specific way.

Here’s the mechanism: when external websites link to one of your pages, that link passes ranking power (sometimes called “link equity” or “link juice”) to your site. Some of that power then flows to your other pages through internal links. But if the page those external sites link to no longer exists—if it returns a 404—then that link equity hits a dead end. It doesn’t pass to any other page on your site. It just vanishes.

If you have broken pages with backlinks, you’re essentially leaking the ranking power you’ve already earned.

How to find broken pages with backlinks

In Google Search Console, go to the Pages report (formerly Coverage report) and look for 4XX errors. This tells you which pages on your site return errors.

The problem is, this report doesn’t tell you whether any of those broken pages have backlinks. You’d have to cross-reference each broken URL against the Top linked pages report manually. For sites with many broken pages, that’s impractical.

A faster approach: use the Analyze AI free broken link checker to scan your site for broken links quickly. Or, if you have access to a backlink analysis tool, use the Best by Links report with a “404 not found” filter to show only your dead pages that have backlinks, sorted by link count.

This report gives you a prioritized fix list: the broken pages at the top have the most links and therefore the most value to reclaim.

Three ways to fix broken pages with backlinks

Once you’ve identified your broken pages with links, you have three options:

For most sites, the 301 redirect is the fastest and most reliable fix. The key word is relevant—don’t redirect a broken page about email marketing to your homepage. Redirect it to your best working page about email marketing.

Action tip: Audit your site for broken pages with backlinks at least quarterly. Every broken link with backlinks is ranking power you’ve already earned but aren’t using.

4. Replicate Your Competitors’ Links

No two websites have identical link profiles. Your competitors have links you don’t have. And some of those links are gettable—if you know where to look.

There are two particularly effective ways to replicate competitors’ links: stealing their broken links, and following their guest post trail.

Tactic A: Claim links from competitors’ broken pages

This is the same technique you used in Tactic 3, but applied to your competitor’s website instead of your own.

In a backlink analysis tool, plug in a competing domain and open the Best by Links report with a “404 not found” filter.

Look at the top results. Each one is a page that used to exist on your competitor’s site, attracted backlinks, and is now broken. The sites that linked to that dead page are now sending their visitors (and their link equity) to a 404 error.

If you have a working page on the same topic, you have a compelling pitch: reach out to those linking sites and let them know the page they’re linking to is broken. Offer your working page as a replacement. Most webmasters will be happy to swap the link because fixing a broken link improves their own site’s user experience.

If you don’t have a page on that topic yet, consider creating one specifically to capture those links. This is called broken link building, and it’s one of the most reliable link building tactics because you’re offering genuine value: a working resource to replace a dead one.

Tactic B: Find (and write for) the sites that publish competitors’ guest posts

Guest posting remains one of the most straightforward ways to build high-quality backlinks—when done well. And your competitors’ existing guest posts are a roadmap showing you exactly where to pitch.

In a backlink analysis tool, enter a competitor’s domain and go to the Backlinks report. Add a dofollow filter, then search for “/author/” in the referring page URLs.

Links where the referring URL contains “/author/” usually indicate an author profile page—which means the competitor wrote a guest post for that site.

This is a strong signal that the site accepts guest contributions from businesses in your space. Pitch them. You know two things for certain: they accept guest posts, and they’ve already published content from a business similar to yours. That makes your pitch far more likely to succeed than a cold outreach to a random site.

Action tip: Find competitors’ guest posts and write for those same sites. Find competitors’ broken pages with backlinks and claim those links for yourself.

Track competitors’ visibility in AI search, too

While you’re analyzing your competitors’ traditional backlink profiles, it’s worth checking how they perform in AI search as well. Analyze AI’s Competitor Overview lets you track how often competitors appear in AI-generated answers across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini. You can see their visibility score, sentiment, and which prompts they show up for.

This is useful because it reveals gaps you might not see in traditional SEO analysis. A competitor might have fewer backlinks than you but show up in AI answers more often—because they have better-structured content, clearer answers, or more citations from the sources AI models trust.

You can also use the Suggested Competitors feature to discover brands that AI engines mention frequently in your industry—even ones you might not have considered as competitors in traditional search.

Tracking competitors across both channels—traditional search and AI search—gives you a complete picture of where you’re winning and where you’re losing ground.

5. Show Your Content to “Likely Linkers”

Once you’ve identified patterns in your existing backlinks, you can use those patterns to find new link prospects.

Here’s how it works in practice. Look at the backlinks pointing to one of your well-linked pages. You’ll often notice commonalities—similar types of sites linking for similar reasons.

For example, let’s say you have a comprehensive guide to email marketing. When you check its backlinks, you notice that many of the referring pages are “complete guide to digital marketing” roundup posts. These authors included a link to your email guide as a recommended resource within their broader roundup.

Now search for the same pattern using a content research tool. Look for other “digital marketing guide” pages that mention “email marketing” in the content but don’t yet link to you.

Those are your likely linkers—people who are writing about the same topic, referencing the same category of resources, and would probably find your guide useful. If you reach out with a brief, genuine email showing them your content, some percentage will add a link.

A few tips to make outreach actually work:

Keep it short. Three to four sentences maximum. Introduce yourself, explain why their post is relevant, and show them the resource.

Be genuine. Don’t use a mass outreach template. Reference something specific about their article.

Don’t ask for the link. Show them the resource and let them decide. Pushy link requests get ignored.

Follow up once. A single follow-up after five to seven business days is fine. More than that is spam.

Action tip: Find commonalities in the links you already have, find similar prospects (your “likely linkers”), then show them your content.

6. Find Who “Cites” You in AI Search

This is the tactic most people overlook entirely—because it requires a different mindset than traditional link building.

In traditional SEO, you track backlinks. In AI search, the equivalent is citations—instances where an AI engine like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini references your website in its response to a user’s question.

Citations in AI search matter for two reasons:

They drive real traffic. When Perplexity or ChatGPT cites your page, users can click through to your site. This is measurable, attributable traffic—not just “visibility.”

They reinforce your authority. AI engines tend to cite sources they’ve seen cited before. Getting cited creates a positive feedback loop.

But unlike backlinks, you can’t find AI citations in Google Search Console or any traditional SEO tool. You need a tool built specifically for AI search analytics.

Analyze AI tracks every citation your brand receives across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, Gemini, and other AI engines. The Prompts dashboard shows which prompts trigger mentions of your brand, your visibility percentage, sentiment score, and position in the response.

This is the AI search equivalent of checking your rankings in Google. Instead of tracking keywords, you’re tracking prompts. Instead of measuring position on a SERP, you’re measuring whether you appear in the AI-generated answer at all—and if so, in what position and with what sentiment.

Track which pages AI engines send traffic to

Beyond citations, Analyze AI connects to your Google Analytics to show you exactly which pages receive traffic from AI engines—and from which engines.

The Landing Pages report breaks this down to the page level. For each page that receives AI traffic, you can see the referring AI engines, session count, engagement rate, bounce rate, session duration, and even which prompts triggered the citation.

This data reveals which of your pages are already performing well in AI search. Just as you use the “Best by Links” report to find your most linked content, you use the Landing Pages report to find your most cited content. The playbook is the same: identify what’s working, figure out why, and create more of it.

Why this matters for your link building strategy

Understanding your AI citation profile doesn’t replace traditional link building. It complements it.

A page that earns lots of backlinks and lots of AI citations gets traffic from two compounding channels. When you’re deciding which content to create or which pages to promote through outreach, factor in both signals. A page that ranks well in Google but never gets cited by AI engines is leaving traffic on the table. A page that gets cited by AI engines but has few backlinks may be vulnerable to losing its Google rankings.

The strongest content strategy invests in both.

Bonus: Find Less Competitive Keywords Where Links Have More Impact

Backlinks correlate positively with rankings and organic traffic. But if you’re going after a hypercompetitive keyword like “best credit cards,” you may need hundreds or thousands of backlinks from unique websites just to crack the top five.

For most websites, that’s not realistic. A smarter approach is to target keywords where fewer backlinks are needed to rank—and then build links to those pages strategically.

There are two practical ways to find these opportunities:

Method 1: Filter for low Keyword Difficulty scores

In a keyword research tool, enter a seed keyword related to your niche, then filter for keywords with a low Keyword Difficulty (KD) score—say, below 10 or 20.

Keyword Difficulty estimates how hard it is to rank for a keyword based on the backlink profiles of the current top-ranking pages. A low KD score means the pages currently ranking don’t have many links, so you may be able to outrank them with fewer links of your own.

This isn’t foolproof—KD is just an estimate, and other factors like content quality, topical authority, and search intent alignment matter too. But it’s a practical starting filter.

You can also use Analyze AI’s free keyword difficulty checker or keyword generator to quickly assess difficulty and find related keyword ideas without needing a paid tool.

Method 2: Find pages ranking with few links

Search a content research database for a keyword or phrase related to your niche. Filter for pages that get significant organic traffic (say, 500+ visits per month) but have very few referring domains (fewer than 5).

The logic is straightforward: if a page ranks well and gets traffic with almost no backlinks, the keyword it ranks for is probably not very competitive. That’s an opportunity for you.

Click into each result to see which keywords the page ranks for, and you’ve got a list of low-competition topics to target.

Action tip: Instead of competing for hyper-competitive head terms that require hundreds of links, target keywords where a handful of quality backlinks can put you on page one.

Find opportunities in AI search prompts, too

Here’s the AI search angle most marketers miss: some AI prompts are far less “competitive” than others.

Just like some keywords have a KD of 90 and others have a KD of 5, some AI prompts return the same established brands every time while others are wide open for newcomers. The prompts where your competitors appear but you don’t are your biggest opportunities.

Analyze AI’s Competitor Overview dashboard surfaces exactly these gaps. You can see which prompts trigger competitor mentions but not yours, and get specific recommendations on what content or structural changes would help you appear.

And the Prompt Suggestions feature recommends new prompts to track based on your industry, so you can discover opportunities you didn’t even know to look for.

Putting It All Together

Finding who links to your website is a useful starting point. But it’s just that—a starting point.

The real work is turning link data into action. Build relationships with serial linkers. Study what content earns links in your niche. Fix your broken pages. Steal your competitors’ link opportunities. Reach out to likely linkers. And track your visibility in AI search alongside your traditional backlink profile.

The companies that win at SEO in 2026 aren’t the ones obsessing over one channel. They’re the ones that understand how backlinks, content quality, and AI citations all reinforce each other—and invest in all three.

If you want to track your brand’s visibility across AI search engines and see exactly which pages earn citations, Analyze AI gives you the data to make that happen. Start by checking your website’s authority and current keyword rankings for free, then layer in AI search tracking to see the full picture.

Related reading on the Analyze AI blog:

• The 9 Best Backlink Building Tools in 2026

• Off-Page SEO: 11 Strategies That Work + AI Tracking

• 6-Step SEO Competitor Analysis (+ Track AI Search Rivals)

• How To Get Mentioned in AI Search (From 65k Citations Data)

• 2026 SEO Content Strategy: 10-Step Breakdown

• 10 Internal Linking Tips for SEO Explained