A referring domain is a website that links to yours. A blog can link to you in five different posts and still count as just one referring domain. You have five backlinks, all from the same website.
This matters because a single website can send you a lot of links. Think of a directory that puts your link in its footer. That link might appear on hundreds of pages. Your backlink total gets bigger, but it's still one website linking to you.
50 backlinks can tell two very different stories
Say you and a competitor each have 50 backlinks. Yours all come from one directory. Theirs come from 50 different websites.
referring domain
referring domains
The backlink totals looked identical. The referring-domain counts give you a reason to look closer: which websites are linking to your competitor, and why?
We'd start there before deciding to go out and get more links. A bigger count on its own doesn't tell you whether those websites have anything to do with your business.
Look at who's linking to your competitors
Imagine finding an industry directory you've never heard of in a competitor's referring domains. You open it and discover that it lists businesses like yours. Now you have a specific place to check: does your business qualify for a listing?
Or you find a publication that covers your industry. Read a few of its articles. If you decide to pitch it, use what you've read to explain why your idea would interest its readers.
This is what we find useful about referring domains. The count helps you compare websites. The domains behind it can give you ideas about where to go next.
What does Rankfield give you?
Look up a domain and you'll get its total referring-domain count, plus a list of up to 20 linking websites. For each one, we show its domain, Site Strength, and Observations.
Site Strength is our 0–100 score for that website's link strength. It helps you compare the sites in the list. You can open any of them to see what they actually publish.
If the count says 2,000 and the list has 20 websites, the other 1,980 haven't disappeared. The count covers all the referring domains we have recorded; the list gives you up to 20 to inspect. We return domains, without the individual page URLs containing each link.
What does “Observations” mean?
It records a connection between two domains. In the current data, 1 means we've recorded that connection. It doesn't mean there is exactly one backlink between those websites.
Where does the count come from?
We use Common Crawl's published web data and count each linking domain once. Its data includes links to resources such as images and scripts, as well as links between pages. So a domain can appear in the list without having mentioned you in an article.
You may get a different count from another tool. Crawlers visit different pages at different times, and tools make different choices about which links to include. A link added yesterday may show up in one tool before another.
For a competitor comparison, use the same tool for every domain. And if a result is unavailable, keep it that way in your report. Missing data isn't a count of zero.
Let your agent put the list together
Give your agent your domain and three competitors. Ask it for a table with each website's Referring Domains and Site Strength, followed by the referring websites returned for each competitor. You can then pick a few to open and read.
Rankfield gives your agent access through HTTP or MCP. Both metrics are free to use today, and you can get an API key without creating an account.
Look up your domain, or copy a ready-to-use prompt with your API key. Start with a website you know. The results will be easier to make sense of.