Searches for Backlink analysis tools is a massively popular search phrase in Google that have 500k searches a month as of January 2025. I know only because I rank for it – the suggested numbers from SEMRush (based on Google Ads) are ridiculously wrong – suggesting less than 10% as the global monthly estimate FOR ALL keywords with “backlink” with a SEMRush Keyword Difficulty score of 82.
But most surprising of this was the searches for “Free Backlink Analysis” – a search no doubt that SEOs and Site owners are looking for at an astonishing rate.
Why do I say astonishing though?
Because Backlink Analysis is impossible. And free backlink analysis doesnt exist
Backlink Analysis tools dont exist
Because no SEOs have the tools to do backlink analysis – and Toxic Reports are FUD and pure nonsense. The tools dont exist and most link farms and PBNs (private blog networks) block crawlers from these tools. But many sites have thousands if not millions of backlinks. Thats impossible for a person to evaluate, link by link, page by page.
Yet -there are over 500k people a month searching for it. It seems bizarre.
Toxic Links are nonsense
Google Doesn’t care about them – they implicitly say so – yet everyday on Reddit, SEOs and siteowners come to say they’ve disavowed them yet whatever complaint that they have (like not ranking, de-indexing, “Crawled but not indexed”, etc) still exists.
In Reality, Backlink Analysis is impossible
Incomplete Backlink data
No single tool or platform provides a complete picture of all backlinks to a website. Google Search Console, for example, only shows a sample of backlinks and focuses solely on Google search data and because backlinks are constantly changing as new links are created and old ones are removed. This makes it challenging to maintain an up-to-date analysis.
Backlink Quality assessment
Determining the quality and relevance of backlinks is subjective and can’t be automated. While tools can provide metrics, human judgment is necessary to evaluate the true value of a link.
Too Time-consuming
Manual outreach and analysis of backlinks can be extremely time-consuming, especially for larger websites with thousands of backlinks and evaluating the impact of anchor text distribution on SEO performance is complex and not fully understood.
But hey, partial backlink analysis works
While these challenges make backlink analysis difficult, it’s important to note that it’s not impossible. SEOs can still gain valuable insights by using a combination of tools, manual analysis, and experience to inform their link-building strategies and overall SEO efforts.
