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Referring Domains

See every domain linking to your site, with authority scores and link counts — filtered and exported in seconds.

Written by Mike

All Domains Linking to Your Site — in One Report

The Referring Domains report lists every unique domain that links to the site you are analyzing. Built on Serpstat's 1.1 trillion backlink index, it gives you a complete picture of your inbound link profile — and your competitors' donor bases. Newly detected websites appear within one day of creation.

What you can achieve:

  • Audit link profile quality: See every domain linking to your site with authority scores and page counts — spot patterns in your incoming link distribution at a glance.

  • Find competitor outreach targets: Compare your referring domain profile with a competitor's to identify high-authority sites that link to them but not to you.

  • Monitor new and lost donors: Filter by date of link discovery to track which domains have started or stopped linking to your site in any given period.

Getting Started

  1. Navigate to Backlink Analysis → Referring Domains in the left sidebar.

  2. Enter a domain (e.g., example.com) into the search bar and click Search.

  3. Review the list sorted by Referring Pages descending by default.

  4. Use the Domain Rank filter — for example, set "Greater than 50" — to narrow results to authoritative donors only.

  5. Toggle Only domains without subdomains to exclude subdomain-level entries from the count.

  6. Click Export to download the list in CSV, XLS, or XLSX for use in outreach or disavow workflows.

Key Metrics Explained

  1. Referring domain: The domain that contains links pointing to your site.

  2. Referring pages: The count of individual pages on that domain linking to you. One domain can contribute many pages.

  3. Serpstat Domain Rank (SDR): Authority score from 0 to 100 based on the depth and breadth of the referring domain's own backlink network. Higher is stronger.

  4. Date of link discovery: The date Serpstat first detected a link from this domain to your site. Use this to track when new donors appeared.

Pro Tip: Build a Ranked Outreach List in Two Exports

A competitor's referring domain list minus your own = your highest-relevance outreach targets, pre-filtered by niche relevance.

  1. Run Referring Domains on your site. Export the full list.

  2. Run Referring Domains on your top competitor. Export that list.

  3. Compare the two exports. Domains in the competitor list but not yours are your first outreach targets.

  4. Sort the gap list by SDR descending — highest authority donors at the top.

⚠️ Important: The Referring Domains report draws from Serpstat's 1.1 trillion backlink index. Data is updated continuously — newly created websites can appear within one day. The Recrawling URL Tool lets you request a manual re-check of up to 500 URLs per day. Credits are not charged. Unused daily credits do not carry over.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the difference between Referring Domains and Backlinks?
​A: Referring Domains counts unique websites linking to you. Backlinks counts every individual link across all those domains. One referring domain can contribute dozens of backlink pages. Referring domain count is the stronger authority signal for most analyses.
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Q: Can I filter out links from subdomains?
​A: Yes. Use the quick filter "Only domains without subdomains" to exclude subdomain entries. Use "Only subdomains" to see the reverse — subdomain-level links only.
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Q: How do I export the list for link building?
​A: Click Export and choose CSV, XLS, or XLSX. To send data to Google Sheets or BigQuery, connect your Google account in Settings first.
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Next Steps

  • Backlinks — See every individual link with full anchor, type, and attribute data.

  • Malicious Sites — Identify harmful inbound links within your referring domain list.

  • Links Intersection — Compare referring domain profiles across competing sites side by side.

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