How to analyse competitor backlinks using Ahrefs Site Explorer

Executive overview

Ranking in Google requires backlinks, and understanding what links your competitors earn is the first step. Ahrefs Site Explorer reveals backlink volume, referring domains, and growth trends for any website or URL.

Comparing two competing domains side by side instantly shows which is acquiring links faster — a signal worth investigating further. The referring domains report, filtered to dofollow links, lets you quickly assess whether a site's link profile is worth replicating.

The fastest way to find link prospects is to study who already links to your competitors.

Understanding the three backlink indexes

• Live index: links confirmed active on the last recrawl.
• Recent index: live links plus links lost in the past ~90 days.
• Historical index: all links ever found, dead or alive — the largest of the three.

Reading the growth graphs

• The referring domains and referring pages graphs show link acquisition over time.
• Default view is the last year; can be narrowed to 30 days or expanded to all-time.
• Side-by-side domain comparison reveals which site acquires links more effectively.
• Comparing two URLs on the same topic shows which page attracts more links — a 5–10 second check worth doing before any deeper analysis.
• The new and lost referring domains graph (non-cumulative) exposes spikes: sudden gains often signal a new linkable asset or a campaign worth reverse-engineering.

Using the referring domains report

• Accessible from the left sidebar in Site Explorer.
• Filter to dofollow links to focus on domains passing link equity.
• Sort columns (e.g. by dofollow link count descending) to surface the highest-volume linkers first.
• High link counts from a single domain usually indicate a sitewide link — confirm by checking if anchor text and URL are identical across all links.
• Use the domain search filter to check whether a specific site links to your target.
• For smaller sites, the report quickly reveals whether their link building is legitimate or worth skipping.