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Free Backlink Audit

Live-verify up to 100 backlinks, anchor, dofollow / nofollow / UGC / Sponsored split.

What a run costs
One free run a day, no account needed
How it runs
In the background
Who it is for
Free: 2 a day. Silver: 5 a day. Gold: 10 a day. Ultimate: unlimited.

A free account raises the daily allowance and keeps your results. Create one — no card needed.

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Overview

A backlink audit checks the inbound links pointing at your site to flag toxic or spammy referring domains, anchor text over optimisation (a known Penguin trigger), and links that have gone dead since the last crawl. This free tool live verifies up to 100 backlinks per run.

How Verification Works

For each URL you submit, the tool fetches the live referring page, confirms the link is still in the HTML, classifies the rel attribute as dofollow, nofollow, UGC, or sponsored, extracts the anchor text, and notes the HTTP status. Dead links and links with rel changes since you last checked are surfaced first.

When To Use It

Run it as a sanity check after pulling a fresh report from Ahrefs, Semrush, or Majestic, because third party data can lag the live web by weeks. Use it before submitting a disavow file to confirm the toxic links you plan to disavow are actually still live. Use it after an outreach campaign to verify placement.

About the tool

What Is The SBMM Backlink Audit?

The SBMM Backlink Audit is a free online backlink checker that live-verifies up to 100 inbound links per run. Paste a list of URLs claiming to link to your site (from your Ahrefs, Semrush, or Majestic export, or from a manual outreach tracker) and the audit confirms each link is still live, classifies its rel attribute, extracts its anchor text, and flags dead or changed links so you know exactly what you are working with.

Third-party backlink databases lag the live web by days or weeks. A backlink that shows up in Ahrefs may already have been removed, switched to nofollow, or quietly turned into a UGC link after a moderator review. Acting on stale data wastes outreach hours, distorts disavow files, and can lead to penalty appeals based on links that no longer exist. Clean your backlink export with our URL Editor first to deduplicate, lowercase, and force HTTPS, then run this audit.

This audit fixes the freshness problem by fetching each referring URL in real time, parsing the rendered HTML, confirming the link is present, and reading the rel attribute as it stands today. It is the fastest sanity check before you submit a disavow file, before you celebrate a placement, or before you trust a competitor backlink report.

Step by step

How To Use This Tool In 3 Steps

  1. Paste Your Backlink URL List

    Drop up to 100 URLs (one per line) into the form. These are the referring pages you want to verify, not the target pages on your own site. You can paste straight from an Ahrefs / Semrush / Majestic export.

  2. Live HTTP Fetch Of Each URL

    The audit fetches every referring page live, parses the HTML, looks for an outbound link matching your target domain, classifies the rel attribute (dofollow / nofollow / UGC / Sponsored), extracts the anchor text, and records the HTTP status.

  3. Review The Report And Act

    See a per-link table sorted by status: live + dofollow, live + nofollow, dead, redirected, or anchor changed. Copy the cleaned list straight from the table into your disavow file, outreach tracker, or client report; signed in, the full result also downloads as JSON.

Why this tool

Why Use This Tool

  • Live HTTP Verification

    Every URL is fetched in real time, not pulled from a cache. The dofollow / nofollow / UGC / Sponsored classification reflects the rel attribute as it stands at audit time, not as it stood when the database was crawled.

  • Up To 100 Backlinks Per Run

    Ten referring URLs in one batch without an account, and 100 signed in. Enough for a full sanity pass on a fresh backlink export, an outreach campaign summary, or a competitor backlink slice.

  • Rel Attribute Split

    Reports each link as dofollow, nofollow, UGC, or Sponsored. Dofollow links pass equity; nofollow / UGC / Sponsored links do not. Knowing the split is critical for risk weighting and disavow decisions.

  • Anchor Text Extraction

    Pulls the exact anchor text from the live HTML so you can spot over-optimised anchors (a known Penguin trigger) and verify a placement matches the anchor you brokered in outreach.

  • HTTP Status Per Link

    Flags 200 (live), 301 / 302 (redirected), 404 (dead), 410 (gone), 503 (server issue), and rare codes. Dead links are surfaced first so you stop wasting outreach time on URLs that no longer exist.

  • Free, No Sign-Up, One Run A Day

    One free run of this tool a day without an account. A free account gives you two runs a day of this tool, keeps your results and lets you download them. Paid plans raise the allowance further.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Why audit backlinks at all?

Backlinks are the strongest off-page ranking factor and remain a confirmed Google signal in 2026. Auditing them tells you which links are still live, which have switched to nofollow (and stopped passing equity), which anchor texts are over-optimised, and which referring pages have died. Each finding has direct ranking and disavow implications.

What is the difference vs Ahrefs or Semrush?

Ahrefs and Semrush are deep historical backlink databases. They are great at finding links you did not know about, but their freshness lags the live web by days or weeks. This audit live-verifies the links those tools surface so you act on current data, not stale data.

What is the difference between dofollow, nofollow, UGC, and Sponsored?

Dofollow links pass PageRank equity and SEO value. Nofollow links do not pass equity but still drive referral traffic and brand signal. UGC marks user-generated content (forum, comment, profile links) and is treated as a soft nofollow. Sponsored marks paid links and must be declared to comply with Google's link spam policy.

Should I disavow nofollow links?

Generally no. Google already ignores nofollow links for ranking purposes, so disavowing them is wasted effort. Reserve your disavow file for clearly toxic dofollow links from spammy or penalty-hit domains. Use this audit to confirm a link is actually dofollow before disavowing it.

Does this audit estimate Domain Authority?

No. It reports what it can actually see on the page: HTTP status, rel attribute, anchor text, and whether the link is still live. Domain Authority is a third-party estimate, and this tool never invents a number it did not measure. For a Domain Rating straight from Ahrefs, use the Bulk Domain Rating Checker.

How fresh is the backlink data?

It is as fresh as the moment you run the audit. Every URL in your batch is fetched live during the run, parsed once, and reported. There is no database between you and the live web, so the freshness is identical to a manual browser visit.

Can I audit a list of 10,000 backlinks?

Not in one run. A run takes ten links without an account and 100 signed in, because each one is a live request to someone else's server. For a large list, run it in batches. Most disavow and outreach work only needs the few hundred links that matter anyway.

Will this tool submit a disavow file for me?

No. Disavow submission must be done manually through Google Search Console because it requires signed authentication that only you have. This audit gives you the cleaned, live-verified list you paste into the disavow.txt file before uploading it to Search Console yourself.