What’s the Difference Between Referring Domains and Backlinks?

Backlinks and referring domains are similar, but not exactly the same.

Written by Vlad Koval
Updated over a week ago

What do the modes for analysis *.domain/*, domain/*, Prefix and URL mean?

Find out what the modes mean on Ahrefs and how to effectively use them when adding a URL or domain.

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

What is Ahrefs Rank?

Find out what Ahrefs Rank is and how it is calculated.

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

What is Ahrefs Domain Rating?

Find out what Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR) is and how it is calculated.

Written by Rebekah
Updated over a week ago

What is Ahrefs URL Rating?

Find out what URL Rating (UR) is and how it is calculated.

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

What are Live, Recent and Historical links?

Find out what are Live, Recent and Historical links and the difference between them.

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

What is the URL rating distribution graph?

Find out what the URL rating distribution is in Site Explorer.

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

What is Organic Traffic in Ahrefs and how do we calculate it?

Find out what the Organic Traffic metric is and how accurate it is.

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

What data is the Organic Traffic chart pulling?

Find out more about the Organic Traffic chart in the Organic Search section of Site Explorer Overview

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

What is Traffic value in Site Explorer?

Learn more about the organic and paid traffic value metrics in Site Explorer.

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

What data is the Organic positions heatmap chart pulling?

Find out more about the Organic positions heatmap in the Organic Search section of Site Explorer Overview.

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

What does CTLDs Distribution stand for?

Learn more about the CTLDs Distribution map in the Overview section of Site Explorer

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

What are SERP features?

Find out what SERP features are, and discover all the SERP features that can be seen for keywords of your target site analysed at Ahrefs.

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

What are Linked Domains?

Find out what Linked Domains are in Site Explorer and Batch Analysis.

Written by Vlad Koval
Updated over a week ago

What does "Page is not currently in our index" mean?

Find out what Page is not currently in our index" means.

Written by Rebekah
Updated over a week ago

What does "There are no results in our index for the specified domain/URL" mean in Site Explorer?

Find out what There are no results in our index for the specified domain/URL" means.

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

What do the different social metrics stand for in the Top Content report in Site Explorer?

Find out what the individual numbers mean for Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest in Site Explorer (as well as Content Explorer)

Written by Helen
Updated this week

Why do I see backlinks in the New Backlinks report labelled as "Delayed"?

Find out what "Delayed" backlinks mean

Written by Dania
Updated over a week ago

What is Disavow functionality at Ahrefs used for?

Discover how helpful Ahrefs Disavow Links integration can be.

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

What are canonical URLs?

Find out what canonical URLs are and how to find them in Ahrefs.

Written by Vlad Koval
Updated over a week ago

What are Redirect Chains?

Find out what redirect chains are.

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

How do I control your Bot's crawling behaviour?

Find out how you can control AhrefsBot's behaviour on your website.

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

How long does it take for my site to be removed from Ahrefs?

Find out what happens after you have blocked AhrefsBot in robots.txt

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

How long does it take for Ahrefs to find my new backlink?

I have gained a backlink some time ago, but Ahrefs hasn’t indexed it yet. When will I be able to see a new backlink in my backlink profile?

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

Why doesn't Ahrefs crawl or index my website fully?

What do "We don't currently have any pages for that target in our index" / No Data / No Results / "Page is not currently in our index" mean?

Written by Rebekah
Updated over a week ago

How do I enable Ahrefs' bot to crawl my website and index its pages?

Find out why the pages of your website are not crawled or indexed.

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

Can I submit links for Ahrefs to crawl or ping your service to get links indexed faster?

Find out why it isn't possible to manually submit a URL or XML sitemap for an on-demand indexing of your site.

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

How do I see all the pages that have been crawled by Ahrefs?

Find out where to find the list of pages that have been added to Ahrefs' index.

Written by Vlad Koval
Updated over a week ago

Does Ahrefs clean its database from spammy subdomains from time to time?

Find out if Ahrefs cleans its database of links.

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

How the "Group similar links" filter in the Backlinks report works

Find out how "group similar links" filter within the Backlinks report in Site Explorer works.

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

Why do I see different amount of new/lost backlinks on the same day with corresponding reports of Site Explorer?

If you happened to get different number of new/lost backlinks reported for the same day using different filtering options, here's why.

Written by Anna
Updated over a week ago

How the "Platform" filter in Site Explorer works

Find out how to use the "Platform" filter and what each Platform mean in Site Explorer's 'Backlinks' and 'Best by Links' reports

Written by Dania
Updated over a week ago

How the "Link type" filter in Site Explorer works

Find out how to use the "Link Type" filter and what each Link Type mean in Site Explorer's 'Backlinks' report

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

How the "SERP features" filter work

Find out how Ahrefs' "SERP features" filter work in Site Explorer and Rank Tracker.

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

How to see inbound and outbound links for your site

See links pointing to your site and links from your site pointing to other sites

Written by Dania
Updated over a week ago

Understanding "link lost" reasons

Find out the reasons behind links that are reported "lost" on your "lost links" report (and how to get them back)

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

How to check if your domain is ranking in any SERP features

Find out how to see if your site is ranking in any SERP features.

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

How to see a site's backlinks history beyond the predefined 60 days

Find out how to see your backlinks history in the New/Lost/Broken report.

Written by Vlad Koval
Updated over a week ago

How to monitor recent ranking changes in Site Explorer

Monitor recent ranking changes in Movements Report

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

How to upload a disavowed links file in Ahrefs Site Explorer

Find out how to upload disavowed links onto Site Explorer.

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

How to check pages for HTTP status codes in Site Explorer

Where to look for pages' http response codes in Site Explorer

Written by Vlad Koval
Updated over a week ago

How to find the backlinks identified by Ahrefs on the target page

Find out how you can check whether backlinks found by Ahrefs is on a website.

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

How to create a Site Explorer report in PDF format

Find out how to create reports from Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

Why did my Ahrefs Rank drop if I haven’t lost any links?

Find out why there was a drop in your Ahrefs Rank.

Written by Tim Soulo [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

Why has there been a drop in my Domain Rating (DR) recently? Did your crawl algorithm change?

Find out the reasons behind a drop in your website's Domain Rating (DR).

Written by Dania
Updated over a week ago

My competitor doesn't have links from high-DR sites, so why are his DR and Ahrefs Rank higher than mine?

Find out why your competitor has a higher DR than you.

Written by Tim Soulo [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

Is there a way to see the change in my website’s Domain Rating?

Find out how to check the change in your DR.

Written by Tim Soulo [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

Why is a page's UR higher than the DR?

Find out why you can have a page that has a high UR, but low DR

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

Does a low DR mean that the website is spammy?

Find out if you can determine if a site is spammy from its DR.

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

Why is the UR (URL Rating) for a URL with and without slash ("/") different?

Find out why the UR differs for URLs with slash and without slash.

Written by Anna
Updated over a week ago

Why does my domain show a number for UR and DR despite having 0 backlinks or referring domains?

Find out why we show a numerical value for DR/UR even though the domain has 0 referring domains or backlinks.

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

Why do I see different results for www.domain.com and domain.com?

Find out why results differ for URLs with www and non-www.

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

Why do I see a decrease in my Referring pages graph despite an increase in my Referring Domains graph?

Find out why there may be a drop in referring pages even though the number of referring domains have increased.

Written by Dania
Updated over a week ago

Is Organic Traffic a monthly figure (based on past 30 days)?

Find out whether Organic Traffic is a monthly figure (based on past 30 days) or an average monthly figure (based on the last 12 months)?

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

Does Ahrefs have a spam score, or something similar?

Find out if Ahrefs has a spam score, and how you can check your backlinks for spam.

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

Why can't I see the organic keywords sites like YouTube/Amazon are ranking for?

Find out why you are unable to check what organic keywords Amazon, YouTube and other large sites are ranking for.

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

Why is my backlink marked as "broken redirect" if it works?

Find out the reason why your link can be lost as "broken redirect" while being fully functional.

Written by Vlad Koval
Updated over a week ago

Can I see the ranking history of a given keyword?

Find out how you can see the ranking history of the keywords important to you

Written by Tim Soulo [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

Why do links from LinkedIn, Slideshare, Quora and PDF files not appear in Ahrefs' backlinks report?

Find out why Ahrefs does not index links from LinkedIn, Slideshare, Quora and PDF files.

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

Why am I getting slightly different results in Ahrefs vs the exported file for large sites?

Find out why results may differ for Ahrefs and the exported file.

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

Why is the number of referring domains on my dashboard different from the Site Explorer Overview?

Find out why the number of referring domains differs from your dashboard and your referring domains report

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

Why is a page not in the "Top Content" report in Site Explorer?

Find out why some pages are missing from the “Top Content” report in Site Explorer.

Written by Vlad Koval
Updated over a week ago

Why don't the ranking positions in Site Explorer match those I see in Google?

Find out why there is a discrepancy between what you see in Google SERPs and Site Explorer.

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

Why is my disavow file not displaying correctly?

Fixing common issues with uploading disavow files

Written by Dania
Updated over a week ago

Why does a website have more referring IPs than referring domains?

Find out why a website can have more referring IPs than domains.

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

Why is a 'Captcha' title tag shown in my Site Explorer?

Find out why a Captcha message is shown instead of your title tag.

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

My keywords are ranking but it shows as 'Lost' in the Movements report

See the reasons why you may see keywords reported as Lost in Site Explorer's Keyword Movements report, but ranking in Google

Written by Dania
Updated over a week ago

For some keywords, I see the Positions in Organic Keywords have not been updated for a long time. Can they be updated more often?

Find out why some keywords are not updated as frequently.

Written by Tim Soulo [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

I have Lite subscription, why don't I see all the organic keywords of a target website?

When I analyze a website in Ahrefs Site Explorer, some of the organic keywords are blurred. Why is that?

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

Why does Ahrefs report a backlink as “Lost” if I still see it on a page?

Find out why a link is "lost" even though it's still on the page.

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

Why is there a 'spike' in Referring Domains in 2013?

Find out why there is a spike in RDs in 2013.

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

How come the sum of all anchors percentage in Anchors is >100%

Read on to learn how anchors percentage is calculated.

Written by Anna
Updated over a week ago

What is the maximum number of backlinks/domains that can be downloaded with the Agency plan?

Find out how many backlinks/domains you can export with the Agency plan.

Written by Vlad Koval
Updated over a week ago

Why does organic traffic exist on the graph for my website when it is not in existence before Dec 2016?

Find out the reason why the organic traffic graph reflects traffic before Dec 2016, even if your website was not in existence yet.

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

Why don't the organic traffic numbers reported by Ahrefs match those I see in Google Analytics?

Find out why there is a discrepancy between what you see in Ahrefs and Google Analytics.

Written by Anna
Updated over a week ago

Why are there jagged lines in the Referring Pages graph?

Find out why some graphs of Referring Pages on the Overview of Site Explorer exhibit jagged lines.

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

Why do the numbers under the "Platform" filter not add up?

Find out the reason why the numbers under the "Platforms" categories in Backlinks report of Site Explorer do not add up.

Written by Helen
Updated over a week ago

I can't seem to locate the "Hide disavowed links" button. How do I enable it?

Find out the plan required for using the disavow function and how to enable it on Ahrefs.

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

Do I still need to do something with Google Webmaster Tools even after I disavow spam domains in Ahrefs?

Find out what actions you need to take after disavowing spam domains in Ahrefs.

Written by Tim Soulo [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

Why is there a discrepancy between the number of disavowed links shown on the Dashboard and the Disavow Links page?

Find out what the number of disavowed links shown on Dashboard mean.

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago

Why are some anchors missing in my report?

Written by Rebekah
Updated over a week ago

Why are some keywords not shown on your paid keywords (PPC) report?

Find out why certain paid keywords are not shown on our paid keywords (PPC) report.

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

What is the relationship between paid keywords and paid traffic value?

Find out the difference between paid keywords and paid traffic value

Written by Si Quan Ong
Updated over a week ago

Why do I see an [Empty Title] in the Best by links growth report?

Understand the possible reasons for [Empty Title] in the Best by links report in Site Explorer

Written by Dania
Updated over a week ago

What do the colored graphs in the “Competing Domains”/”Competing pages” reports mean?

Find out what the colored graphs mean on Competing Domains Report.

Written by May Soon [Ahrefs]
Updated over a week ago