Checklist
Check number of backlinks to a website when a rival is cited
A competitor appears in every AI answer and you do not. Before you panic, spend twenty minutes collecting facts.
What you are really measuring
Two numbers matter: referring domains and DR. Raw backlink totals mislead, because one site can add thousands of links from a single footer.
Short on time? Just two numbers matter. To check the number of backlinks to a website, use the free lookup on the home page; it returns DR and referring domains for any domain with no key. Write both down, with the date, for yourself and for each rival.
Our figures come from our own crawler and our own link index, refreshed about once a month. A link a rival won last week may not be counted yet, which cuts both ways.
Pause here. Many owners discover the cited page is a local news roundup or a Google Business Profile summary, not the rival's own site, and that changes the plan completely.
Twenty-minute checklist
- Ask three AI tools the same customer question and copy every domain they cite
- Strip each URL down to the bare domain (shop.com, not shop.com/blog/post)
- Look up your own domain first, so you know your baseline
- Look up each cited domain and record DR and referring domains
- Mark any cited domain that is not a business: a directory, a news site, a forum
- Compare only against real business rivals, not against directories
- Note the cited page, not just the domain; it is often an article, not the homepage
- Check whether the cited page states the answer in its first paragraph
- Save everything in one dated sheet
Reading the gap
Gaps come in three sizes. Small means within a factor of two, medium means a factor of five, and large means a different league.
A small gap rarely explains why Perplexity cites one business over another. Look at the cited page: prices, opening hours, the neighbourhood. Pages that answer a customer's exact question are easier for any tool to quote. Links will not show you that.
A medium gap is worth a modest plan. List the sites that link to the rivals but not to you with the credit-priced intersect action, then ask which ones you could earn honestly: a chamber of commerce, a supplier, a local newspaper.
A large gap says you are comparing against a chain. Pick other rivals.
The same lookup for a list, if you have credits
The bulk action takes up to 2,000 domains for one credit. Paste the cited domains in, comma separated.
curl "https://ailinkboost.com/api.php?action=bulk_dr&domains=rival1.com,rival2.com,yourshop.com&key=sk_live_..."Say a pet-groomer in your town has 38 referring domains and DR 21, while the three groomers AI tools name have 60, 75 and 410. The 410 is probably a franchise. Ignore it. You are 20 to 40 domains behind the other two, which is a gap a few local listings and supplier pages can close, not a crisis. These numbers are made up for the example.
Questions that come up halfway through
What if a rival has a hundred times my links?
Then links do not explain a gap you can close this year, and a huge number usually means a bigger or older business. Compare against rivals your own size, and study their content instead.
Is DR the same as Ahrefs DR?
No. Ours is a 0-100 log score from referring domains alone, round(100 · log(ref_domains+1) / log(2·10^7)). Use it to compare sites inside our tool, not against numbers from other products.
Will more links fix this?
Maybe, but test the dull causes first, as listed in the troubleshooting table. Links help most when the page itself is solid already.
