Ahrefs vs. SEMrush vs. Majestic vs. SEO Spyglass: Which Backlink Checker Reigns Supreme for Specific Audit Tasks?

The Important Role of Backlink Audits in Today’s SEO

Backlinks are still a very important ranking factor in the ever-changing world of search engine optimization (SEO). The digital stage is crowded, and not all backlinks are good performers. High-quality backlinks act as endorsements, signaling credibility and authority to search engines like Google, which improves a website’s online presence. On the other hand, toxic or low-quality links can actively hurt a site’s visibility and search rankings. Because there are so many of these bad links, you need to be proactive in defending against them.

This is exactly where a thorough backlink audit is necessary. It is an important diagnostic process for finding both hidden risks, like harmful links that could lead to penalties, and untapped opportunities, like finding valuable existing links, learning about competitors’ strategies, and finding new ways to get links. The information gained from a thorough audit helps website owners and SEO experts improve their strategies, lower their risks, and improve their search engine performance. This need is made even clearer by the change in SEO focus from just the number of links to more advanced quality assessment and risk management. The focus on real, high-quality backlinks has grown stronger as Google’s algorithms have gotten better at finding and punishing link schemes that try to trick people. Backlink audits are now much more complicated than they used to be. They need tools that can pick apart subtle quality signals that go beyond just counting links. Because of this, choosing a backlink audit tool is more important than ever, since the stakes are much higher: possible penalties versus big ranking boosts.

The Titans: Ahrefs, SEMrush, Majestic, and SEO Spyglass are the best tools for your audit.

Ahrefs, SEMrush, Majestic, and SEO Spyglass are four names that always come up when people talk about SEO software that can break down backlink profiles. These tools are well-known for their strong backlink analysis features, and each one has its own strengths. Ahrefs and SEMrush are often thought of as all-in-one SEO suites that offer a lot of features beyond just checking backlinks. [7, 8] Majestic, on the other hand, has found a niche as a specialist, focusing heavily on link intelligence with its own metrics. [9, 10] SEO Spyglass, which is part of the SEO PowerSuite, works as a detailed desktop-based investigator, offering granular analysis, especially when it comes to assessing penalty risks. [11, 12] The growth of the SEO tool market has led to this variety, giving users powerful but different solutions. This variety is helpful, but it also makes it hard for users to choose the best tool for their needs.

Setting the Stage: The Purpose of This Article—Helping You Choose the Right Audit Tasks

The main goal of this article is to do a thorough review of these four best backlink checkers. But this isn’t just a general overview. The goal is to break down their features with a specific goal in mind: to figure out which of these tools—Ahrefs, SEMrush, Majestic, or SEO Spyglass—is the best backlink checker for certain audit tasks. This means we’ll look at how each tool works for different parts of a backlink audit, like the size of the database, the accuracy of the metrics, the ability to find toxic links, and the ability to analyze competitors. This analysis seeks to furnish a transparent, evidence-based comparison, enabling you, the reader, to arrive at a well-informed decision that corresponds with your specific needs, technical proficiency, and financial constraints. A thorough comparative analysis centered on specific tasks is immensely beneficial for managing the intricacies of selecting the appropriate tool from a pool of formidable candidates.

Decoding Excellence: The Uncompromising Standards for a Top-Notch Backlink Checker

To choose the best backlink checker, you need to know what makes a tool work well. Our Ahrefs vs. SEMrush vs. Majestic vs. SEO Spyglass comparison is based on a few key factors that set the best options apart from the rest.

The Foundation: The size, freshness, and accuracy of the database

The index, which is the database of known links that a backlink checker uses, is the most important part of the tool. A bigger database that is updated more often usually means a more thorough audit that gives you a better picture of a website’s link profile. [13, 14] Major players often brag about having huge databases; for example, SEMrush says it has 43 trillion backlinks, Ahrefs says it has 35 trillion historical backlinks, Majestic says it has 21 trillion, and even tools like SE Ranking (which is often compared to these) say it has 2.9 trillion. [8, 13] But “accuracy” is a complicated idea. All tools use crawlers and complex algorithms, but the way they find things and how often they do it can be different. The size of a database is a selling point, but the frequency of updates and the tool’s ability to quickly find relevant new links are just as important, if not more so, for audits that are done on time and effectively. A big database might have a lot of links that aren’t useful or are out of date, so for ongoing monitoring, it might be more important to find new, useful links quickly than to keep track of the total number of historical links. In the end, the tool’s analytical features decide if a user can find the “signal in the noise.”

What Proprietary Metrics Mean (DR, Authority Score, TF/CF, etc.)

Each top backlink checker makes its own unique metrics to measure things like link quality, page authority, and domain strength. Ahrefs’ Domain Rating (DR) and URL Rating (UR) [15, 16], SEMrush’s Authority Score (AS) [17, 18], and Majestic’s Trust Flow (TF) and Citation Flow (CF) [9, 19, 20] are all examples. It is important to remember that these metrics are proprietary and cannot be compared directly between different tools. A DR of 50 from Ahrefs is not the same as an Authority Score of 50 from SEMrush. So, to understand these scores correctly, you need to know how they were calculated and what factors affect them. For example, Ahrefs’ DR is based only on links and doesn’t take spam into account directly [15]. On the other hand, SEMrush’s Authority Score takes into account organic traffic estimates and spam factors [17]. This kind of critical thinking stops people from making mistakes and makes sure that metrics are used correctly in an audit.

Main Features of a Backlink Audit

A top-notch backlink checker should have more than just basic data; it should also have a set of powerful features designed for auditing tasks:

• Reporting on Backlinks in Detail: It is important to be able to list all backlinks, including the source URL, target URL, anchor text, and link attributes (e.g., dofollow, nofollow, UGC, sponsored).
• Referring Domains Analysis: A complete look at the unique linking domains, how good they are, and where they are.
• Tracking New and Lost Links: This is important for keeping an eye on recent changes to the backlink profile and figuring out link velocity.
• Finding Broken Links: Finding links on your site that go to pages that don’t exist (404 errors), which can leak link equity.
• Anchor Text Analysis: Tools that look at the distribution of anchor texts to find possible over-optimization or unnatural patterns that could lead to penalties. [6, 22, 24]
• Toxic Link Detection/Risk Assessment: These tools are made to find links that could be harmful or spammy. This is a very important part. Tools like SEMrush give you a “Toxicity Score,” and SEO Spyglass gives you a “Penalty Risk” assessment.
• Competitor Analysis Capabilities: The ability to compare your backlink profile to those of your competitors, find “link gaps” (sites that link to your competitors but not to you), and learn about their link-building strategies.
• Disavow File Generation: Help with making a file that is formatted correctly for submission to Google’s Disavow Tool for links that can’t be manually removed and are harmful. [25]

User Interface (UI), Ease of Use (UX), and Learning Curve

The ease of use of a tool has a big effect on how quickly an audit can be done. A clean, intuitive user interface (UI) and a positive user experience (UX) make it easier to find your way around, understand data, and keep things running smoothly overall. Some tools, like Ahrefs, are often praised for their user-friendly design and easy navigation [7, 21], which makes their rich feature sets relatively easy to use. Some tools, like Majestic, have been said to have an interface that is either too old or too complicated, which can make it harder for beginners to learn how to use them. The learning curve that comes with mastering the advanced features of any of these powerful tools should also be taken into account, as it affects how quickly and effectively a user can use the tool’s full potential. A poorly designed UI can make users tired, cause them to miss important information, and slow down the audit process. This is why UI/UX is such an important part of a tool’s practical value.

Choices for Reporting and Data Export

To do a good backlink audit, you often need to share data with team members or clients or use it in other programs. So, the ability to make reports that can be changed and are easy to understand, as well as export data in different formats (like CSV and PDF), is very important. This lets you do more in-depth analysis off the platform and present your findings in a professional way.

Prices and overall value for money

Lastly, the price of the tool and what it can do for you are very important factors. This means looking at subscription prices, the limits that different pricing tiers put on features (like credit systems [21] or report limits [8]), and whether the features, data quality, and ease of use are worth the money just for backlink auditing purposes. [13] What might be a great deal for a big agency could be too much for a freelancer or small business.

Ahrefs: The All-Seeing Eye for Link Intelligence?

How to Use Ahrefs for Backlink Auditing

Ahrefs is a top-notch, all-in-one SEO platform that is well-known for its powerful backlink analysis tools. [4, 7, 13, 23] Many SEO experts use it as their main tool for looking at link profiles because it has a lot of data and advanced features. [7] Its reputation comes from giving users a lot of information about the link landscape, which makes it a strong competitor in any backlink checker comparison.

Ahrefs’ main backlink audit features

Ahrefs has a lot of great features, with the “Site Explorer” tool being the main place to find backlink data. [21] Some of the most important ones for backlink audits are:

• Site Explorer: This main part gives a full picture of a website’s backlink profile. It has interactive charts, lists of referring domains, anchor texts, and tracking of new and lost links, as well as broken backlinks. [7, 13, 21]
• Backlink Profile Analysis: Users can look at detailed lists of backlinks and use many filters based on link type (Dofollow, Nofollow, UGC, Sponsored), link type (e.g., content, image), Domain Rating (DR), and Domain Traffic. This level of detail is necessary for thorough audits.
• The Referring Domains Report gives a detailed look at all the unique domains that link to the target website, along with their metrics.
• The Anchors Report is an important tool for figuring out how anchor text is spread out. It can help you find patterns that may be too optimized or not natural.
• Best by Links Report: This helps people quickly find out which pages on a website get the most backlinks, which can help them figure out what content works and gets links.
• Link Opportunities (Content Gap for Links): Ahrefs’ “Content Gap” tool is often used to find keyword opportunities, but it can also be used to find domains that link to competitors but not to your site, like “Link Intersect” features in other tools. This is very helpful for getting links in a strategic way. Ahrefs is also known for being useful in strategies for building broken links.
• Integration of the Site Audit Tool: Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool is mainly for on-page and technical SEO. However, it can also find broken outbound and inbound links and other technical problems that could indirectly affect link equity and the effectiveness of existing backlinks.

Domain Rating (DR) and URL Rating (UR) are two of our own metrics.

Ahrefs uses two important proprietary metrics to measure link-based strength:

• Domain Rating (DR): This number shows how strong a website’s overall backlink profile is. It is measured on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100, with higher scores meaning stronger profiles. [15, 16] To get DR, you need to know how many unique referring domains there are and their DR, as well as how many unique sites those domains link to. Only “followed” links count, and only the first link from a unique domain boosts the target site’s DR. DR is mostly used to measure a website’s “ranking potential” and to find new links, which helps prioritize outreach efforts. However, it’s important to remember that DR is only based on links and doesn’t take into account things like website traffic, domain age, or link spam (though Ahrefs actively works to stop fake DR inflation). Also, a high-DR site linking to a lot of other sites will pass less “DR juice” to each target.
• URL Rating (UR): This is similar to DR, but it looks at the strength of a specific page’s backlink profile on a 0-100 logarithmic scale. This is useful for figuring out how valuable a link is for a specific piece of content.

Ahrefs’ large database and advanced filtering tools make it easy for users to do very detailed competitor analysis. But because there isn’t a specific “toxicity score,” the accuracy of finding toxic links depends a lot on how well the user can understand other Ahrefs metrics, like DR, referring domain traffic, and anchor text patterns. This often means that the user has to check the site manually. This gives experienced SEOs more control, but it might be hard for beginners.

Size, freshness, and accuracy of the database

Ahrefs always says that it has one of the biggest and most up-to-date backlink indexes in the business. It says it has a database of 35 trillion historical backlinks and 218 million domains. [13] Many users and independent tests show that Ahrefs often shows more backlinks than some of its competitors, including SEMrush in some comparisons. [7] The platform is known for its fast proprietary crawler and frequent updates, which make sure that the data shown is usually current and complete.

How easy it is to use and how it looks

People generally like Ahrefs because its interface is easy to use, its navigation is clear, and its reports are easy to read and look good. [4, 7, 21] Even though it has a lot of features, it is thought to be easy to learn, even for people who are new to advanced SEO tools. [21] This ease of use is a big reason why it is so popular for complicated tasks like backlink audits.

Pros for Checking Backlinks

• Has a huge and regularly updated database of backlinks that covers everything. [7, 13]
• It has great filtering options that let you do very specific research and break down data into smaller pieces.
• It has an easy-to-use interface and clear data presentation, which makes it easier to analyze.
• Good for finding a site’s best pages by links and for analyzing anchor text in depth. [7]
• Very helpful for strategies for building links that don’t work. [8]
• Lets you use data from Google Search Console (GSC), which can make the audit more accurate and complete. [4]

Backlink auditing has some drawbacks.

• The credit-based pricing model on its Starter and Lite plans can be limiting for in-depth backlink audits because common tasks like applying filters or exporting data use credits. This could mean that users on a budget do less thorough audits, which could mean they miss important link problems or chances.
• It doesn’t have a clear, automated “toxic link score” like the ones in SEMrush or SEO Spyglass. Finding links that could be dangerous is more about looking at DR, traffic metrics, link context, and other signs by hand.
• It can be expensive, especially its higher-tier plans, which makes it a big investment for individuals or small businesses. Ahrefs usually doesn’t offer a traditional free trial; instead, it only offers limited free tools or occasional promotional access.
• It now only gets its data from Google, but it used to get it from other search engines as well.

Ahrefs is a great tool for understanding link equity flow and building authority because it focuses on “link popularity” through DR [15] and has a long history of strong backlink data. This could make it more useful for tasks that involve improving “link authority” and for comparing this authority to that of competitors, rather than for assessing penalty risk in a granular way right away.

Pricing Levels That Matter for Backlink Auditing

Ahrefs has a number of pricing plans, and the features and limits for backlink auditing differ by tier (prices are approximate; check the official site for the most up-to-date numbers):

• Lite: About $129 per month, or $99 per month if you pay for a year in advance under some plans. Each user gets 500 credits, which can be used up quickly during audits. [4, 27, 28]
• Standard: About $249 per month (or $199 per month if you pay once a year under some plans). It usually gives each user unlimited credits, which makes it better for regular, in-depth audits.
• Advanced: About $449 a month, or $399 a month if you pay once a year in some cases.
• Enterprise: Starting at about $1,499 per month.

Appropriateness for Certain Audit Tasks

Ahrefs is great for:

• It has a big database and advanced filtering that lets you do in-depth competitor analysis and find link gaps.
• Full assessments of backlink profiles.
• Using DR as a guide to find high-authority link targets.
• Finding and using opportunities for broken link building.

But it takes more work and knowledge to find toxic links accurately than tools that give you dedicated, automated toxicity scores.

SEMrush: The Ultimate Tool for Checking Backlinks?

Getting Started with SEMrush for Backlink Auditing

SEMrush is a well-known all-in-one digital marketing suite that has a lot of tools that do more than just analyze backlinks. It has strong backlink auditing and competitive analysis tools, which make it a strong choice in the Ahrefs vs. SEMrush debate and a favorite among many marketing professionals. Its integrated approach aims to give a complete picture of a website’s SEO health.

Main Backlink Audit Features in SEMrush

SEMrush gives users a number of important tools and features that are specifically made for checking backlinks:

• Backlink Analytics Tool: This is the main tool for looking at backlink profiles. It gives you information about total backlinks, referring domains, anchor texts, and link attributes (follow/nofollow) and keeps track of new and lost backlinks over time. One of its best features is that it can group referring domains by niche, which gives you an idea of how relevant the link sources are to the topic.
• Backlink Audit Tool: This is a specialized tool that looks at a website’s backlinks in great detail to see if they are harmful. It works with Google Search Console and Google Analytics to get more detailed information. It helps find links that could be harmful, sorts them by toxicity level, and makes it easier to make a disavow list, which can even be sent to Google directly through the interface.
• Authority Score: SEMrush’s own way to measure the overall quality and SEO strength of a page or domain.
• Toxicity Score: This score is an important part of the Backlink Audit tool. It tells you how harmful each backlink could be. It looks at links against more than 50 toxic markers to figure out how risky they are.
• Backlink Gap Tool: This powerful tool lets users compare their backlink profiles with those of up to four other websites at the same time. It shows domains that link to competitors but not to your site, which can help you find good link-building opportunities. [7, 26]
• Link Building Tool: SEMrush has a tool that helps you find relevant link prospects and manage outreach campaigns. This turns the information you get from the audit into actionable link acquisition efforts.

Proprietary Metrics: Toxicity Score and Authority Score

SEMrush uses two main proprietary metrics to evaluate backlinks:

• Authority Score (AS): This is a compound metric that ranges from 0 to 100 and is meant to show how good a website (or webpage) is overall and how strong its SEO is. Its calculation is based on three main factors: 1) Link Power (the number and quality of backlinks), 2) Organic Traffic (the estimated monthly visits the website gets from search engines), and 3) Spam Factors (indicators of a natural versus potentially manipulative link profile). A “good” Authority Score is relative and best understood by comparing it to direct competitors within the same niche. It’s used for competitive intelligence, evaluating the quality of potential link prospects, and tracking overall SEO performance over time. The inclusion of organic traffic and spam factors makes Authority Score a more holistic, albeit potentially more volatile, measure of domain strength compared to purely link-based metrics. The AS can change even if the backlink profile stays the same if the estimated traffic or perceived spamminess changes. This makes it a broader “SEO health” indicator.
• Toxicity Score: This metric, which you can find in the Backlink Audit tool, tells you how harmful a backlink could be to a website’s SEO. [6, 17] It is calculated by comparing backlinks to a number of known toxic markers, such as links from spammy forums, non-indexed sites, sites that spread malware, or known Private Blog Networks (PBNs). [6, 24] This score is very helpful for deciding which links to look into further for possible removal or disavowal. [4, 17]

The “Backlink Audit” tool from SEMrush, which has a “Toxicity Score,” is especially easy to use for people whose main goal is to find and fix harmful links. Compared to more manual methods used with other tools, this can make it easier to get started with this task, which is often very difficult.

Size, freshness, and accuracy of the database

SEMrush says it has a very large database of backlinks, with 43 trillion backlinks. The platform stresses the need for frequent updates, with some data, like new and lost backlinks, being updated every day. Its data comes from 142 different databases around the world, with the goal of covering everything.

How easy it is to use and how the interface looks

SEMrush’s interface is usually easy to use. However, because the platform has so many tools and features, new users may have to learn how to use all of them fully. The Backlink Audit tool, on the other hand, is meant to give clear, useful information that makes it easier to find and fix broken links.

Benefits of Backlink Auditing

• The toxicity score in the backlink audit tool makes it much easier to find and deal with links that could be harmful.
• It has great tools for analyzing competitors, especially the Backlink Gap tool, which helps you find valuable link opportunities.
• The Link Building Tool, which is part of the program, works with Google Search Console and Google Analytics to make the process from audit to action easier. [4, 6, 26]
• Has a huge database of backlinks that is updated often.
• The Authority Score looks at more than just links (like organic traffic), which might give you a more complete, if different, view of how strong a domain is than metrics that only look at links.

Backlink auditing has some drawbacks.

• Its estimates of organic traffic (which help make the Authority Score) can sometimes be wrong or not match up with real analytics data, just like any other SEO tool. [24]
• The subscription fees can be quite high, which could make it too expensive for small businesses, freelancers, or people who only want to do backlink audits.
• Some users may think that Ahrefs’ backlink analysis interface is easier to use or more intuitive for some tasks, but this is usually a matter of opinion.

Because SEMrush is an “all-in-one” tool, its backlink tools work well with other SEO and content marketing tools. This can be a big plus for making all-around plans, but it might not go as deep into very niche backlink situations as a tool like Majestic that focuses on links.

Price Levels for Backlink Auditing

You can use SEMrush’s backlink tools with its different pricing plans, which have different limits and features (prices are approximate; check the official site for the most up-to-date numbers):

• Pro: About $139.95 a month ($117.33 a month if you pay for a year). Gives you access to Backlink Analytics and the Backlink Audit tool, which are good for freelancers and small projects.
• Guru: $249.95 a month ($208.33 a month if you pay for a year). Better for growing businesses and agencies because it has higher limits, access to historical data, and the content marketing toolkit.
• Business: About $499.95 a month ($416.66 a month if paid once a year). It has even higher limits and API access and is made for bigger businesses and agencies.

Good for Certain Audit Tasks

SEMrush is great at a few specific backlink audit tasks:

• Finding and dealing with toxic links: Its Backlink Audit tool with the Toxicity Score is one of the easiest and most straightforward ways to do this important job.
• Finding Competitor Backlinks and Opportunities: The Backlink Gap tool is great for finding strategic link-building opportunities by looking at competitor profiles.
• Overall Profile Health Assessment: The authority score, backlink analytics, and toxic link data all work together to give you a good picture of how healthy a domain’s backlinks are.

Majestic: The Link Historian with a Focus on Trust?

An Introduction to Majestic for Checking Backlinks

Majestic (formerly Majestic SEO) is a long-standing and very specialized tool in the SEO industry that is known for its focus on link intelligence. [4, 9, 10, 14, 23] Unlike other SEO suites, Majestic has mostly worked on creating and improving metrics that help users understand the quality, quantity, and context of backlinks. Trust Flow and Citation Flow are two of its own “Flow Metrics” that are at the heart of its approach and are widely talked about in the SEO community.

Main Backlink Audit Features in Majestic

Majestic’s features are designed for analyzing deep links:

• Site Explorer: This is the main way to enter a domain and get a lot of information about backlinks, such as referring domains, anchor texts, and the types of links that are most common.
• Fresh Index vs. Historic Index: Majestic stands out because it has two separate backlink indexes. The Fresh Index usually has links that were found in the last 90 to 120 days, while the Historic Index has all the links that Majestic has found over the life of a domain. To get to the Historic Index, you usually need a higher-tier plan, like the Pro plan [9]. This dual-index system is very useful for figuring out link velocity, historical trends, and how a site’s link profile has changed over time.
• Trust Flow (TF), Citation Flow (CF), and Topical Trust Flow (TTF): These are Majestic’s main proprietary metrics that are meant to give you more detailed information about links. [9, 10, 19, 20]
• Compare Tool: This tool lets users compare the flow metrics and backlink profiles of several domains, which helps with competitive analysis.
• Clique Hunter: This tool finds websites that link to more than one competitor (or any other set of domains you choose). This is very helpful for finding common link sources in a niche and high-potential link opportunities that your site might not be taking advantage of. [9, 10, 31]
• Pages Report: Shows the strongest pages on a website based on their Citation Flow and Trust Flow scores. [9]
• Link Density Chart: A picture that tries to show where links are on a linking page. It suggests that links in the main content areas are more valuable than links in footers or sidebars.
• Neighborhood Checker: Shows other sites hosted on the same IP address or subnet, which could be useful if those sites are of low quality. This can help you find potentially dangerous shared hosting environments.

Trust Flow, Citation Flow, and Topical Trust Flow are all proprietary metrics.

The Flow Metrics from Majestic are a big part of what makes it valuable:

• Trust Flow (TF): This score, which goes from 0 to 100, is meant to show how good and reliable the links to a website or URL are. The number is based on how closely a site is linked to a set of trusted websites that were manually reviewed. The farther away a site is from these trusted seeds in the link graph, the lower its TF is likely to be. [9, 10, 19, 20] TF is used to check the credibility of backlinks and find authoritative link targets.
• Citation Flow (CF): This score, which ranges from 0 to 100, looks at the quantity or influence of links pointing to a URL, mostly without regard to their quality. Based on the number of links it has received, it predicts how influential a URL might be. [9, 10, 19, 20] People often think of it as a sign of “link equity” or “link juice.”
• The Trust Flow / Citation Flow Ratio shows how TF and CF are related. A site should have a balanced ratio, which means that its TF should be higher than its CF. A very high CF and a very low TF can mean that there are a lot of low-quality or spammy links. This could be a sign of a problem that needs to be looked into during an audit. [9, 19, 20]
• Topical Trust Flow (TTF): This metric sorts a website’s trustworthiness and influence by subject (e.g., Arts, Business, Health, Sports). It does this by looking at the subjects of the websites that link to it. TTF’s goal is to help users figure out how relevant their backlinks are to their niche. [6, 10] But some reviews have said that TTF’s categories may not always be reliable. [9]

Majestic’s unwavering focus on pure link intelligence, as shown by TF, CF, and its unique Historic Index [6, 9, 10], makes it a great tool for SEO experts or purists. These users often want to look closely at the link graph itself, which could help them find details that other tools with more general scores that include non-link factors might miss.

Size, freshness, and accuracy of the database

Majestic has a lot of backlinks, especially in its Historic Index, which is said to have more than 21 trillion historical backlinks. The Fresh Index is updated regularly to show new links that have been found. The strength of Majestic is not in trying to guess non-link metrics like organic traffic but in the depth of its link data.

User interface and how easy it is to use

People often criticize Majestic for its user interface, which people say is old-fashioned or less intuitive than newer SaaS platforms like Ahrefs or SEMrush. Some of its visual data representations, like some graphs, have been said to be hard to understand, which could make it harder for users to get insights quickly. This could mean a longer learning curve or more patience is needed to find your way around.

Benefits of Backlink Auditing

• Link intelligence is very specialized and gives you a lot of information about the quality of links (Trust Flow) and the number of links (Citation Flow).
• The difference between Fresh Index and Historic Index is very useful for looking at historical backlinks and finding new trends in link acquisition. This separation makes it possible to look at link velocity and the growth of a backlink profile in more detail.
• When accurate, Topical Trust Flow can be very helpful for figuring out how relevant a backlink profile is to a niche and finding link opportunities that make sense in the context of that profile.
• The Clique Hunter tool is great for analyzing the competition, especially for finding domains that link to more than one competitor often. [10, 31]
• Usually has cheaper plans for its core link data than the all-in-one suites of Ahrefs or SEMrush. [4, 13]

Backlink auditing has some drawbacks.

• The old user interface can be a big problem for some users, making it harder to find their way around and understand the data. The usefulness of its rich data might be limited by how easy it is to use.
• Majestic only looks at backlinks and link intelligence. It doesn’t have the more general SEO tools that Ahrefs and SEMrush do, like technical site audits, in-depth keyword research, or content marketing tools. [9]
• Unlike SEMrush or SEO Spyglass, it doesn’t have a built-in tool for making a disavow file or a clear “toxicity score.” Users have to figure out link toxicity by looking at the Flow Metrics and other link data on their own.
• Some reviews have questioned the reliability of certain features, like the Topical Trust Flow categorizations and some complicated visual graphs.

Pricing Levels for Backlink Auditing

Majestic’s prices are set up so that you can access different levels of data and analysis units (prices are approximate; check the official site for the most up-to-date numbers):

• Lite: About $49.99 a month ($41.67 a month if paid once a year). This plan usually lets you use the Fresh Index and a certain number of analysis units.
• Pros: It costs about $99.99 a month ($83.33 a month if you pay for a year). This level usually gives you access to the Historic Index and a lot more analysis units, which makes it better for in-depth audits. [4, 32]
• API: About $399.99 a month. This is for developers, big agencies, and users who need to access a lot of data through Majestic’s API.

Good for Certain Audit Tasks

Majestic is especially good for:

• Using the Trust Flow and Citation Flow metrics, a thorough link quality assessment.
• Historical backlink analysis, which looks at how link profiles change over long periods of time.
• Using Topical Trust Flow (assuming the data is correct) to find important websites in certain niches.
• Clique Hunter is a tool that lets you do advanced competitor link commonality analysis.

However, it needs a lot of manual interpretation and expertise to find toxic links because it doesn’t have automated scores for this purpose.

SEO Spyglass: The Desktop Detective for Deep Link Research?

SEO Spyglass: A Guide to Backlink Auditing

SEO Spyglass is part of the SEO PowerSuite, which is a set of SEO software that runs on your computer. It has built a reputation for doing very thorough backlink analysis, with a focus on its “Penalty Risk” score, which helps users find and fix links that could be harmful. As a desktop application, it works differently than web-based SaaS platforms like Ahrefs and SEMrush.

Basic Backlink Audit Features in SEO Spyglass

SEO Spyglass lets you look at backlinks in a lot of detail with features like:

• Backlink Profile Analysis: Gives detailed reports on each backlink, including the referring domains, anchor texts, IP addresses of linking servers, domain age of link sources, and more.
• Penalty Risk Score: This is one of the best things about SEO Spyglass. It gives each individual backlink a percentage score based on a number of factors to show how likely it is that Google will penalize it. This level of detail directly addresses a major concern for many website owners about link quality and possible penalties.
• Google Analytics and Google Search Console integration: SEO Spyglass can connect to a user’s Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts to get more information. This could give a more complete picture of the backlink profile and how it affects things.
• Competitor Analysis: Users can use the tool to see how their website’s backlinks compare to those of their competitors. Depending on the plan, it can look at up to 11 websites at once. [11, 33]
• SEO Spyglass keeps a history of backlinks, which lets users see which links they have gained and lost over time. This is important for understanding how link profiles change over time.
• Disavow File Generation: It has a built-in tool that makes it easy to create a disavow file based on the penalty risk assessment and other manual reviews. This file is set up so that you can send it directly to Google’s Disavow Tool.
• Domain InLink Rank: This is a unique metric used by SEO Spyglass to measure the value or authority of links passed by backlinks. It is similar to Google’s original PageRank.

Penalty Risk Score: A proprietary metric

The penalty risk score is the most important part of SEO Spyglass’s method for finding bad links.

• Definition: An estimated percentage chance that a certain backlink could lead to a Google penalty for the website that it links to.
• Calculation: A special formula that takes into account a lot of different things is used to get the score. Some of these are the age of the linking domain, the number of links coming in and going out of the linking domain, the page/domain InLink Rank of the source, anchor text diversity (checking for too many identical anchors or anchors that are too optimized for the same keywords), and whether too many links come from the same C-Class IP blocks or individual IP addresses. Links with a “nofollow” attribute are usually given a 0% penalty risk by default because search engines don’t usually use them for ranking calculations, so they don’t cause any direct penalty harm.
• Interpretation: The percentage scores are grouped to help people decide what to do:
  • 0% to 30%: This is thought to be safe or to have little risk of punishment.
  • 30% to 70%: These links could be harmful, so they need to be looked at more closely by hand.
  • 70% to 100%: High risk; these links should be checked right away because they are most likely to hurt SEO. [25]
• Use Cases: Mainly used to find, rank, and handle toxic or high-risk backlinks that may need to be removed or added to a disavow file.

Size, freshness, and accuracy of the database

SEO Spyglass has its own internal database of backlinks that it crawls and updates. It also improves its data by letting users link their Google Search Console accounts. [12, 33] While the exact size of its internal index isn’t always compared to trillions like cloud-based giants, paid plans for SEO Spyglass often brag about being able to find and analyze an “unlimited” number of backlinks for a project. [11, 34] As a desktop tool, updates to the software application itself are released regularly to make it work better and make the user experience better. [11] The freshness of its backlink data depends on its own crawling schedule and how often it syncs with GSC. The fact that paid plans offer “unlimited backlinks” is appealing, but the audit’s overall thoroughness still depends on the size and freshness of its proprietary crawler index, which is enhanced by GSC. This could mean that the potential volume of links processed is lower than the absolute discovery rate of the very latest links when compared to bigger, more aggressively crawling cloud-based indexes.

User Interface and How Easy It Is to Use

SEO Spyglass is generally thought to be easy to use. Its user interface, which is part of a desktop application, is designed to make it easy to understand complex backlink data. People who are used to desktop software may find it easy to use. Because it’s a desktop program, data is stored on the user’s computer. This can be a plus for people who care about data privacy or who would rather pay for a one-time purchase or an annual subscription than pay for SaaS fees every month. But this can make it harder for teams to work together or for people to easily access files from different devices, which are two of the benefits of cloud-based tools.

The Benefits of Backlink Auditing

• The Penalty Risk score gives you direct, actionable advice on links that could be harmful, making a complicated part of backlink audits easier to understand.
• Freelancers and small businesses can use it because it has an affordable pricing structure, with a free version that works (though with some limits) and paid plans that are reasonably priced.
• Most paid plans let you check as many websites as you want and find as many backlinks as you want for each project.
• Some people may prefer a desktop application because it lets them store data locally and control software updates.
• The developers keep the software up to date. [11]
• If you use it as part of the full SEO PowerSuite, it can work with other SEO tasks like link building, site auditing, and rank tracking all in the same software family.

Backlink Auditing’s Cons

• It needs to be installed on a computer and stores data on the computer itself. This might not be good for people or teams who like the ease of use and collaboration tools that come with web-based SaaS platforms.
• It has its own index, but it might not be as big or as quickly updated in real time as the huge cloud-based indexes of Ahrefs or SEMrush. Some sources say that its updates don’t always happen right away.
• The higher-tier (Enterprise) plan usually has some advanced features, like the ability to export reports in HTML or PDF format or white-label reporting.
• It depends a lot on its own metrics, like InLink Rank and Penalty Risk. These are not industry-standard benchmarks like Ahrefs’ DR or Moz’s DA, even though they are useful in their own way. DA is Moz’s own creation.

Pricing Levels That Matter for Backlink Auditing

You can buy SEO Spyglass on its own or as part of the SEO PowerSuite bundle. Prices are close to what they are for the standalone tool (billed yearly):

• You can check as many websites as you want with the free version, but you can only find up to 1,100 backlinks per project, and it doesn’t let you save projects or export data. [11, 34, 35]
• Professional License: About $149 a year. Lets you find unlimited backlinks for unlimited websites, save projects with history, and more. [11, 33, 35]
• Enterprise License: About $359 a year. Includes all the professional features as well as report exporting (HTML, PDF), white-label reporting, and task scheduling. [11, 35]

(SEO PowerSuite, which includes all four tools, has different prices. Professional costs about $299 per year, and Enterprise costs about $499 per year. There are often discounts available. [35] This article is mostly about SEO Spyglass as a backlink checker.)

Appropriateness for Particular Audit Activities

SEO Spyglass is especially good for:

• Toxic Link Identification and Disavow Management: Its Penalty Risk score and built-in disavow file generation make it a great choice for people who want to clean up potentially harmful backlink profiles.
• Detailed Profile Analysis on a Budget: This is a cheap way for freelancers, small businesses, or anyone else who needs in-depth backlink data to get it without having to pay the higher subscription fees of some cloud platforms.
• Desktop Users Can Compare Competitors: For people who prefer or need to use desktop software, this program has good features for comparing competitors.

Ahrefs, SEMrush, Majestic, and SEO Spyglass: A Feature-by-Feature Comparison in the Grand Audit Arena

To pick the best backlink audit tool from these four big names—Ahrefs, SEMrush, Majestic, and SEO Spyglass—you need to know what each one does best and worst for different important audit tasks. The “best” tool for you will depend on what you want to do with it, how much money you have, and how good you are with computers. This part gives a direct, feature-by-feature comparison to help you understand the differences and make a decision, especially when you’re trying to figure out which backlink checker is best for certain audit tasks.

You can see a clear difference in the market: all-in-one SaaS platforms like Ahrefs and SEMrush provide a wide range of SEO tools in addition to their backlink features. These usually cost a lot. On the other hand, more specialized tools like Majestic, which is very focused on link intelligence, and SEO Spyglass, which is based on your desktop and assesses penalty risk, are better for specific needs and usually have different pricing models. This means that the “Ahrefs vs. SEMrush” debate, which happens a lot, sometimes hides the fact that a specialized tool might be better for users who need very specific backlink audits and may already have other tools in their stack.

Table 1: Main Data Metrics and Database

The underlying data that the tool gives is what makes up the basis of any backlink audit. This includes the size and freshness of its link index and the main measures used to judge the strength of a domain and its links.

The more complete a tool’s database is, like Ahrefs’s and SEMrush’s, the more it usually costs. This makes users make a value judgment: is the extra cost worth it for access to a slightly larger dataset, or is a “good enough” dataset from a cheaper tool enough for their audit tasks? How big and complicated the websites being audited are will determine the answer.

Table 2: Finding and handling toxic links

Finding and dealing with toxic backlinks that could hurt SEO performance or lead to penalties is a very important and high-stakes audit task.

Table 3: How Deep the Competitor Backlink Analysis Is

To find new link opportunities and see how your own links are doing, you need to know how your competitors are getting links.

Table 4: Features for Checking the Health of the Overall Backlink Profile

Audits usually start with a general health check, which needs a dashboard of important metrics and trend data.

Table 5: User Interface, Ease of Use, and Learning Curve

The usability of a tool has a big effect on how well the audit works and how deep the analysis is.

Table 6: Costs and Benefits of Backlink Auditing Focus

The budget is a big problem. This table shows not only the price but also the value that is provided for audits, especially for entry-level plans.

“Accuracy” is a quality that everyone wants [13], but no one tool can say it is 100% accurate or complete because the web is always changing and crawling has its own limits. The “best” tool for accuracy might be the one that the user understands and trusts the most when it comes to how it collects and interprets data or the one that makes it easy to cross-reference with other sources like Google Search Console. The focus frequently transitions from pursuing absolute accuracy to attaining “trusted comprehensiveness” for the particular audit assignment.

Tools Are Only Half the Story: The Important Role of Expert Judgment

This comparison of Ahrefs, SEMrush, Majestic, and SEO Spyglass shows how advanced modern backlink audit tools are. However, it’s important to remember that these tools are only one part of the picture. The information they give is just a starting point, not the last word. You can only truly master backlink auditing when you combine powerful tools with skilled people.

Automated metrics are a good place to start, but they shouldn’t be the last word.

Ahrefs’ Domain Rating (DR), SEMrush’s Authority Score (AS) and Toxicity Score, Majestic’s Trust Flow (TF) and Citation Flow (CF), and SEO Spyglass’s Penalty Risk score are all good indicators. They are generated by algorithms to give quick overviews of link profiles and possible risks. [2, 15, 17, 19, 25] However, these algorithms can’t fully replicate the nuanced understanding of context, relevance, intent, and the many subtleties that a human expert brings to the table. [2] As the saying goes, “Expert judgment is key: automated toxicity scores are helpful, but human review and experienced judgment are essential to avoid costly mistakes.” [2] Over-reliance on these automated metrics without critical human oversight can lead to suboptimal or even harmful SEO actions, such as mistakenly disavowing valuable links or chasing irrelevant ones based purely on a score.

The Significance of Contextual Analysis

In SEO, context is very important, and this is especially true when checking backlinks. An expert might know that a link from a “low DR” website is very valuable because it comes from a well-respected, niche community blog that brings in targeted, converting traffic. A tool might flag the link because of its low metric score. On the other hand, a link from a news site with a “high DR” might look good, but if it’s buried in an obscure, non-indexed archive section or isn’t related to the topic, its real SEO value might not be very high. To really understand how relevant something is, you need to look at the linking site beyond its metrics and the specific content and context of the linking page. Algorithms are still trying to get to this level of understanding with human-level accuracy.

Strategic Interpretation and Making Choices

In the end, backlink auditing is all about making smart choices. It takes more than just a number to decide if a link is really “toxic” enough to be disavowed. As we have already said, too many disavowed links can hurt a website’s SEO performance a lot. Finding real link-building opportunities also often requires creative thinking, knowledge of a specific niche’s link economy, and relationship-building skills—things that a “link gap” tool can’t automatically suggest. The tools give you the basic data and the first classifications. The human expert gives you the strategic interpretation, the ability to make decisions with nuance, and the wisdom to know what to do. SEO tools are becoming more advanced, which is great, but it also means that you need to be better at using them. There can be a big difference between what a tool can technically do and what an average user understands how to do with its outputs. This shows how important experience is.

This focus on expert judgment doesn’t mean that the tools talked about aren’t useful. Instead, it is to put them in the right place: as powerful tools that can help a skilled professional come up with deep insights and useful plans. This is what makes backlink auditing an art: it’s not just about the chisel but also about the person who uses it.

The Hidden Dangers of Inexperienced DIY Backlink Audits: How to Get Through the Minefield

Website owners may be tempted to do their own backlink audits because they can easily get their hands on powerful SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Majestic, and SEO Spyglass. The idea is good, but people who don’t have a lot of specialized SEO knowledge often don’t realize how hard this job is. If you don’t know what you’re doing, a DIY backlink audit can quickly become a navigational hazard that does more harm than good.

Getting Data and Metrics Wrong

One of the biggest risks is misunderstanding the data and metrics that these tools give you. Someone who doesn’t know much about SEO might get Domain Rating (DR), Authority Score, Toxicity Scores, or Flow Metrics wrong. For instance, they might panic over a low DR for a new website without realizing that building authority takes time, or they might not understand that scales like DR [15, 16] or Page Authority [18] are logarithmic, which means that moving from DR 70 to 71 is much harder than moving from DR 20 to 21. It’s easy to miss important information, like how links are used in a certain industry, the typical link profile of a new site compared to an established one, or the actual traffic and relevance of a linking page. For example, a bad website design is not a good reason to say that a link is bad; the quality and purpose of the content are much more important. [2]

The Disavow Tool: A Two-Way Street

The misuse of Google’s Disavow Tool is probably the most dangerous thing about an inexperienced DIY audit. This tool is very powerful, so you should only use it as a last resort for clear cases of manipulative link schemes that have led to a manual penalty or for links that are clearly harmful and can’t be removed manually. There is a real risk that an inexperienced user will disavow links that are actually good or even entire valuable domains because they misread the tool’s metrics or don’t understand what “toxic” signals mean. These kinds of actions can cause search rankings to drop a lot, and it can be hard to get them back. It’s a stark reminder that you shouldn’t disavow links just because they are nofollow, have low DA/DR (Google often ignores these), or if there isn’t a manual action. If you disavow too much, it can hurt your SEO!” [2]

Not having a complete understanding and wasting resources

A DIY auditor might get tunnel vision and only focus on backlinks, not the whole SEO ecosystem. Google looks at a site’s authority based on how well it performs overall, which is affected by things like on-page SEO, content quality, technical site health, and user experience. A backlink audit can be a pointless exercise with little effect if you don’t have a full picture of the site’s history, niche, competitive landscape, and how these things work together. This can waste hours and resources on an audit that comes to the wrong conclusions or, even worse, leads to harmful actions. [3] The cost of fixing mistakes made during a bad DIY audit, in terms of time and lost rankings, can be very high.

It’s true that actions that aren’t done right during an amateur audit “can lead to penalties by Google.” Linking your site to spammy sites can hurt its reputation. Lower your search engine rankings. “Use up your resources.”

The Complications of a Professional-Level Audit: A Reality Check

Think about how complicated a full backlink audit really is. It’s not enough to just look at a few scores. It requires carefully looking at thousands or even tens of thousands of individual links. It takes the ability to spot small patterns and signs of manipulative link building, like the 50+ PBN footprints that some experts have written about. [2] Can you tell the difference between different types of link spam, from low-quality directory submissions to advanced link networks? Can you tell when someone is doing negative SEO by building harmful links to your site? [2, 3] Do you have the time to manually check each suspicious link for this long? Do you know Google’s Webmaster Guidelines inside and out so you can make smart decisions about the quality and purpose of links? These questions are not easy to answer. The truth is that if you don’t have a lot of experience, the right tools (and the know-how to use them), a deep understanding of the website’s niche and competition, and a good understanding of Google’s changing rules, doing your own audit can be like walking into a minefield, where one wrong move can set you back a lot. This shows how important it is to have the right information and the right skills to use it.

Looking for help? Expertise in Professional Backlink Audits

If the previous discussion about how complicated backlink audit tools can be and how inexperienced DIY audits can go wrong has made you worried, it’s important to remember that getting help from a professional is a good option and often the best one. To navigate the complicated world of backlinks, you need more than just access to data. You also need to be an expert, have experience, and think strategically.

Bridging the Gap Between Data and Actionable Strategy

The real value of a professional backlink audit is that it can turn raw data from tools into a useful, strategic plan. Experts don’t just look at numbers; they also think about what they mean in relation to your website, industry, and business goals. They know that a backlink profile is always changing, showing what has been done in the past and affecting what can be done in the future.

How important experience and specialized knowledge are

Many SEO experts and specialized agencies have done backlink audits in many different fields. They can spot subtle patterns, find new risks, and find hidden opportunities much faster and more accurately than someone who isn’t as familiar with the details of link analysis. They are good at telling the difference between links that are really harmful and links that are just low-metric but not harmful or even helpful. Also, professionals make sure that their recommendations are up-to-date and useful by keeping up with Google’s constantly changing algorithms, rules, and best practices.

If a business wants to confidently and accurately manage the complexities of its backlink profile, using a professional backlink audit service can turn possible risks into strategic advantages. An expert audit goes beyond automated reports. It gives you personalized analysis, actionable suggestions, and a clear plan for improving your website’s authority and search engine performance. When people understand the tool’s complexities and the risks of doing it themselves, they are more likely to see the value of professional help as a clear and compelling option.

The Final Verdict: Choosing the Best Backlink Audit Tool for Your Needs

After a long look at what Ahrefs, SEMrush, Majestic, and SEO Spyglass can do, it’s clear that there is no one “best” backlink checker for everyone. The best choice is very subjective and depends a lot on the user’s specific audit tasks, the size and skill level of the team, the budget, and the current marketing technology stack. The search for the answer to “Which Backlink Checker is Best for Specific Audit Tasks: Ahrefs, SEMrush, Majestic, or SEO Spyglass?” The best tool for you is the one that fits your specific needs the best.

The decision usually comes down to a choice between all-in-one platforms like Ahrefs and SEMrush, which are useful for a lot of things but cost a lot, and more specialized or budget-friendly tools like Majestic and SEO Spyglass, which are great for specific tasks or have different ways of working.

Recommendations Based on Scenarios

Here are some scenario-based suggestions to help you make your choice:

• Ahrefs and SEMrush are both great choices if you want the most data, detailed analysis, and a wide range of SEO tools (and you can afford it).
  • If you want access to one of the biggest raw link data indexes, very fast updates, great filtering options for more control, and you value its DR/UR metrics for measuring authority, choose Ahrefs. It works especially well for finding linkable assets and doing in-depth research on competitors.
  • If you want an all-in-one platform with a dedicated and very easy-to-use toxic link audit workflow (Backlink Audit Tool with Toxicity Score), a more complete Authority Score that includes traffic estimates, and great competitor link gap analysis features, choose SEMrush.
• Majestic is the best choice for specialized link intelligence and historical depth, and it is often more affordable for this specific focus.
  • It’s great for people who want to do a “purist” link audit that focuses on link quality (Trust Flow) instead of quantity (Citation Flow). It also has a unique Fresh vs. Historic Index that lets you do detailed historical trend analysis. Its Clique Hunter is also very useful for researching link commonality among specific competitors.
• SEO Spyglass is a great choice if you want to do a detailed, cost-effective penalty risk assessment (especially if you use desktop software).
  • The Penalty Risk score is a great way for users who want a guided approach to identifying toxic links and managing disavowals, especially if they are on a tight budget or prefer a desktop software environment.
• For all-around competitor analysis, all of these tools have features for analyzing competitors, but Ahrefs and SEMrush are usually the best because they have a lot of features, such as Link Intersect/Backlink Gap, more data points, and integrated workflows. Majestic’s Clique Hunter is a very strong niche tool for finding common linking domains among several competitors.
• SEMrush (with its Backlink Audit Tool and Toxicity Score) and SEO Spyglass (with its Penalty Risk Score) are better at finding and dealing with toxic links because they have clearer, automated, and guided features for this job. Ahrefs and Majestic can give you the data, but you need to be more skilled and knowledgeable to figure out if a link is toxic.

Final Thoughts on How to Make the Right Investment

It is very important to do the following before signing up for a subscription:

• Take advantage of free trials or limited free versions. SEMrush often gives free trials of its Pro or Guru plans. Majestic gives new users a limited free version when they sign up and a money-back guarantee on some plans. SEO Spyglass has a free version that works but has data limits. Ahrefs has useful free webmaster tools that give you a taste of Site Explorer and Site Audit features. These let you get a feel for the interface and core features.
• Think about what your team already knows and how quickly they can learn: Choose a tool that works with what your team already knows or how quickly they can learn. If a powerful tool has features that are too complicated to use correctly, it is useless.
• Align Strengths with Critical Tasks: The best way to choose is to match your most important and regular backlink audit tasks with the strengths of each tool, as shown in the comparative tables and individual reviews in this article. Put the features that will best meet your needs and have the biggest effect on your SEO efforts at the top of your list.

The best backlink checker is the one that helps you get the best picture of your link profile, find risks and opportunities quickly, and make decisions based on data that boost your website’s authority and search engine performance. This thorough comparison of backlink checkers should help you choose the right one.