Links gained, links lost, links worth getting

Backlinks still matter for rankings, but for most small business and agency sites the day-to-day questions are modest. Did we lose a good link? Is something spammy pointing at us that we should deal with? Which sites would plausibly link to us next? A backlink checker that answers those three well is more useful to a local business than a giant index you open twice a year.

This article explains how RankThat’s backlink monitoring answers each question: what the Backlinks & Audit page shows, how the toxic link audit scores domains, how to build and use a disavow file safely, and where to look for new link prospects. It also covers what the tool doesn’t do, which matters more here than for most features.

Where it lives and how often it updates

Open a project and go to Backlinks › Backlinks & Audit. Data comes from a commercial backlink index. A full check and audit runs automatically twice a month, on the 1st and the 15th, and Refresh runs one on demand.

Twice a month is deliberate. Backlinks change slowly for most sites, and checking daily would cost more without telling you anything new. If you need to confirm a specific link today, open the linking page.

The five tabs

Two charts sit above the tabs: the backlink trend over time and new versus lost links. If you’re new to the vocabulary, the glossary covers backlinks, referring domains and anchor text.

How lost links are caught

You don’t need to watch the New & Lost tab. RankThat raises an alert when a link is lost from a site above a set authority level, so losing a link from a respected local newspaper gets your attention and losing one from a scraper site doesn’t. You’re also notified if more than 10% of your referring domains disappear in one check, or if more than 20 new backlinks appear at once (which is either good news or the start of a spam attack, and you’ll want to know which).

When a good link goes missing, the usual causes are a page that was redesigned or a link moved to a different URL on your site. Check whether the linked page on your site still loads. If it doesn’t, a redirect from the WordPress Bridge restores the link’s value without contacting anyone.

The backlink audit, explained

The audit looks at up to 3,000 referring domains and gives each one a toxic score from 0 to 100. The score starts from the data provider’s spam score and adjusts it using signals that tend to mark low-quality links:

• a low-quality top-level domain
• spam or link-selling words on the site
• the linking page is a link directory
• very low authority
• many links from one weak site
• unusually long anchor text

Links that are nofollow-only lower the score, because they pass little value either way. A domain scoring 60 or more is marked toxic; 45 or more is “potentially toxic”.

The top of the tab shows an overall toxic score: the share of your referring domains that are toxic and still count against you. Medium starts at 10%, high at 25%. Domains you’ve marked Keep don’t count, and neither do domains you’ve confirmed as disavowed in Google.

Making decisions

Filter to To review and work down the list. Each row shows the domain, its toxic score, why it was flagged, its authority, how many links it sends and an example link. Choose:

• Keep (safe): it’s fine. Many flagged domains are, for example a small but genuine local directory.
• Remove: ask the site to take the link down. A removal request email template is included.
• Disavow: tell Google to ignore it.

Using the disavow file safely

Once you have Disavow decisions, download disavow.txt. It’s in the format Google expects (one domain or URL per line) and includes every disavow decision you’ve made, not just this month’s, because a new file replaces the old one in Google. If the site already had a disavow file, import it first so nothing is dropped.

Google has no API for disavow files, so uploading is a manual step in Google’s own tool. After uploading, confirm it in RankThat. Only then do those domains stop counting in your toxic score, so the number reflects what Google has actually been told.

A word of caution: most sites never need a disavow file. Google ignores most spammy links on its own. It makes sense when you see a clear pattern of paid or manipulative links, or after a manual action. See disavow and toxic backlinks before you upload anything.

A worked example: Coastline Plumbing

Coastline Plumbing’s first audit scores 190 referring domains. The overall toxic score is 14%, medium. Twenty-six domains are flagged.

The SEO lead works through them in 20 minutes. Nine are local directories and a supplier’s dealer page: genuine, marked Keep. Fourteen are scraped copies of a plumbing article on foreign domains with link-selling words, plus three pages on one link directory. The remaining three are from a guest post network a previous agency paid for. The scraper sites are left alone (Google ignores them), the paid network gets Disavow, and the link directory gets a removal request first.

The overall score drops to 6% after she confirms the disavow upload. In the monthly report, the backlink audit section shows the change, and the disavow appears under work completed.

What a healthy profile looks like for a small business

Agencies coming from big-brand SEO sometimes panic at a local business’s backlink profile. A few dozen referring domains is normal for a plumber or a dental practice, and so is a share of odd, low-quality domains that link to everyone. What matters is that the links you can name are real: the local chamber of commerce, suppliers and manufacturers, the local paper, sponsorships, industry associations and the directories customers actually use.

So read the profile in that order. First, are the real links there and still live? Second, is anything clearly manipulative pointing at the site, usually left over from a previous provider? Only then worry about the long tail of junk, which Google mostly ignores already. The audit’s job is to make the second question quick to answer.

Finding link prospects

The most realistic link prospects are sites that already link to businesses like yours. Two places help:

• Domain Explorer › Backlink Gap. Enter your domain and up to five competitors. You get the sites linking to them and not to you, sorted with the ones linking to the most competitors first, then by authority. A local chamber of commerce linking to three of your competitors is a strong lead.
• The Competitors tab in Backlinks & Audit, for a side-by-side view of profile size.

For local businesses, Local SEO citations are often the first easy links: directories you should be listed on and aren’t. The link building glossary entry covers approaches that work for small businesses.

What the backlink tools don’t do

• The index is smaller than Ahrefs’ or Semrush’s. Those companies run some of the largest link indexes there are. RankThat covers what matters for monitoring client sites and finding local prospects. For deep link research across the web, the Ahrefs comparison is honest about the difference.
• Updates are twice a month, not daily.
• It doesn’t upload disavow files. Google has no way to do that except its own tool.
• It doesn’t run outreach. There’s a removal request template, but RankThat won’t send outreach emails or manage link building campaigns for you today.
• It doesn’t judge relevance for you. A toxic score is a starting point. A person decides.

Monthly checklist

The audit’s results feed the report automatically, and backlink data is also available to Claude through the Claude connector.

Tip: before disavowing anything, ask whether a person at Google would see the link as an attempt to game rankings. If not, mark it Keep and move on.