How to check the external links pointing to your site

Inbound and outbound are different checks

An inbound link (a backlink) comes from another domain to yours. It is the clearest external trust signal a site has, and you cannot see it by looking at your own pages. An outbound link leaves your page for another site; it is a recommendation you make, and the risk there is a broken destination rather than a missing one. When someone says "check external links to my site", they usually mean inbound. When they say "check the external links on my site", they mean outbound. Two directions, two different tools.

Why inbound links matter

Relevant links can help people discover your pages and provide context to search engines. A count alone cannot tell you whether a link is useful: inspect the source, the surrounding text, and the page it recommends. A backlink list is evidence to review alongside your content, internal links, and search performance.

How to check your backlinks

There are two useful sources. Google Search Console > Links shows a sample of links Google has found pointing to your verified property. A public backlink check reads an open web-crawl index and, where available, search-engine link data, and reports the linking domains it can see. Shipwork does the second: it reads public data with nothing to connect, so you can see part of your link profile in one step.

1. Open the correct property in Search Console and select Links.
2. Under External links, inspect Top linking sites to find referring domains and Top linked pages to see which of your pages receive links.
3. Open a table entry for more detail. Use the export control for a working list; the report's main export offers recent links and a broader sample.
4. Visit an important linking page and confirm that the link is still present and reaches the intended destination. Record the source URL, target URL, date checked, and any redirect.

Google groups some entries and limits the displayed data, so this is a sample of known links. See the official Links report documentation for export limits and grouping rules.

For a site you do not own, you cannot open its private Search Console report. Use a public inbound link checker to inspect the sources it can find, and verify those sources yourself. For links leaving your own pages, use the outbound link checker instead. The outbound-link audit guide explains how to find source pages and review broken destinations.

What a free check can and cannot see

A public index can miss links, especially for young or small sites. Search Console also shows a sample rather than every link Google knows about. A domain that shows nothing in one source may still have links visible in another. That is why the check reports which source answered and does not turn a missing value into a zero as if it were a fact. It reports domains and counts, not a hidden "authority score".

What to do with the list

Read it as a map, not a grade. Find the pages that attract links and make sure they are the ones you want ranking. Find the pages that do not and link to them internally so they are not orphans. If a specific low-quality link is part of a manual action, you can disavow it in Search Console, but that is a last resort for a penalty, not routine housekeeping: Google ignores most spam links on its own.

Questions

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