Free backlink audit score
Backlinks die quietly: removed in a content audit, switched to nofollow by a plugin, lost when a donor page goes down, and nothing tells you. Paste the ones you care about and get one honest number for their health, plus a per-link breakdown showing exactly which ones need a chase. Free, up to 50 links per run.
Running an audit needs a free account so we can fetch and check each donor page for you. No card, takes a few seconds.
| Backlink page | Points to | Status | Issue |
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Show your score
Embed a badge with just the number and band — no client URLs, ever. Safe for an agency site or a case study.
What this audit checks
You give it the backlinks worth checking. For each one it fetches the donor page server-side and answers the questions that decide whether the link is still doing its job:
- Is the link still there? If your URL has been removed from the page, it counts as a lost link and drags the score down.
- Is it still dofollow? If a link you expected to be dofollow has switched to nofollow, it's flagged — it still sits on the page but stopped passing authority.
- Is the donor page alive? A page returning an error or a dead host is a dead link, and the audit catches it.
What it does not do on the free tier: check Google indexation or run a full JavaScript browser. Links on JS-only pages are marked unverified and left out of the score rather than counted as losses. We'd rather say "couldn't check" than guess.
How to use it
- Create a free account (or sign in). It's needed so we can fetch the donor pages for you — there's no card.
- Paste your backlinks, one per line: the donor page URL, your target URL, and optionally whether you expect dofollow or nofollow.
- Run the audit. You get a 0–100 score, a count of what's wrong, and a per-link table showing exactly which links need attention.
- Act on the worst ones — chase the removed links while the placement is still fresh, and grab a badge for your score if you want to show it.
Why a backlink audit is worth running
A backlink profile decays quietly. Links get removed in content audits, donor pages die, and dofollow quietly becomes nofollow after a plugin update. Nothing tells you. A periodic audit turns the quiet worry that half your placements died months ago into a number you can act on, with the exact list of which ones aren't.
The score is a triage tool, not a grade from Google
The 0–100 is a heuristic we compute, not a signal Google publishes. Its job is to help you triage a list of links fast and spot the ones losing value. Every component that feeds it is shown, so you can ignore the headline number and read the parts that matter to you.
Free for a snapshot, paid for the watch
An audit is a photo; monitoring is a video. This free tool gives you a clean snapshot of up to 50 links whenever you run it. The paid LinkGuard runs the same checks continuously across your whole portfolio and emails you the week a link breaks, so you catch the loss in days instead of at the next manual audit months later.
Frequently asked questions
What does the free backlink audit check?
For each backlink you paste, it fetches the donor page and checks three things that decide whether the link still works: is your link still on the page, is it still dofollow or has it switched to nofollow, and is the donor page returning a healthy status or has it gone dead. It rolls those up into a 0–100 score with a per-link breakdown so you can see exactly which links are dragging the number down.
How is the 0–100 score calculated?
It's a transparent weighted blend: how many links are still live and healthy, how many expected-dofollow links are still dofollow, the variety of your anchor text, and the technical cleanliness of the donor pages. It's a heuristic to help you triage, not a Google ranking signal — we show you every component so you can judge it yourself.
Is it really free? What's the catch?
It's free and there's no card. The boundaries, stated plainly: up to 50 links per audit, HTML-only checks (link presence, dofollow/nofollow, page status — not Google indexation), and a free account is required so we can run the audit for you. If you want this running continuously across your whole portfolio, that's the paid LinkGuard.
Does it check whether my backlinks are indexed in Google?
No — indexation checks cost money to run and we don't spend that on a free tool. The audit checks link presence, the rel attribute, and donor page status. Indexation monitoring is part of the paid product. For a one-off indexation check, our free Backlink Index Checker does that separately.
Why do some links show as "unverified"?
Some donor pages only render their links with JavaScript. The free audit uses a fast, lightweight fetch and doesn't run a full browser, so on those pages it can't confirm the link and marks it "unverified" rather than guessing. Unverified links are left out of the score instead of being counted as losses. The paid product renders those pages with a real browser.
Can I share the score?
Yes — after an audit you can grab a badge that shows only the number and band (for example "82/100 — audited with LinkGuard"). It never includes any of your client URLs or domains, so it's safe to put on an agency site or case study.
Last updated: 2026-05-28