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Backlink gap tool · free in early access

Your real backlink gap, and what it costs to close.

A backlink gap analysis that leaves out what doesn't count. linkgap takes your competitors' bought link networks and spam out of the numbers, shows the gap that's left, where to get the real links, and what closing it costs at real marketplace prices.

For SEO freelancers and small agencies who buy links and have to justify the budget.

Create a free account

Explore a sample project with invented data straight away. Your own checks start once your account is approved by hand, usually within one working day, with $3 of live data (about three full analyses).

Not sure yet? See how the 546 → 217 case was counted or estimate your link budget.

  • previously 546 217 good sites linking to the typical competitor, before and after one bought network stopped counting
  • 364 sites in one link network, shared by three competitors
  • 2,221 real link sources: sites linking to the competitors but not to this one

An anonymised real case: a new site with zero backlinks and seven competitors. Site names in the screenshots are invented.

The linkgap overview for nordblick-magazin.de: 217 good referring domains behind the median competitor, with 546 crossed out before removing one link network of 364 domains. Four tiles show your good domains at 0, the median competitor at 217, link networks at 364 domains, and a cost to close of about €10,500, because about 80 paid links match the link strength of their 217. Below, a bar chart compares seven competitors against a dashed median line at 217.
Swipe sideways for the rest of the screen. Open the full screenshot

Most of a backlink profile doesn't count.

A raw backlink count includes links that were bought in bulk or are plain spam, and Google most likely ignores them. Count them and your competitors look further ahead than they are, and the budget you ask for is too big. linkgap takes a link network that several competitors share out of the gap and prices what's left from real offers.

Almost a third of the leader's links were spam

Of 1,000 linking sites sampled from the leader, 294 were rated spam. Every verdict comes from a rule with points, shown on the row it applies to.

Three competitors shared one bought network

364 unrelated small sites that linked to those three competitors and to no other site we measured. That's what a purchased or injected link package looks like.

So the honest gap was 217, not 546

A gap 60% smaller, and a budget to match. That's the number you can put in front of a client.

Want to check this by hand? Backlink gap analysis in seven steps.

If you already use Ahrefs or Semrush.

Keep them. Their gap tools list the sites that link to your competitors and not to you. linkgap answers the two questions that come after that list.

Which of those links count?
Every linking site is rated good, weak or spam by visible rules, and a link network shared by several competitors is taken out of the gap. In our case the gap went from 546 to 217.
What does closing the gap cost?
A budget plan built from real marketplace offers, with surcharges and writing fees as their own columns. In our case about 80 paid links, about €10,500.
What linkgap doesn't do
No keyword research, no rank tracking, no site audit, no outreach. Its backlink data comes from DataForSEO, not from Ahrefs or Semrush.

What you can do with it.

Price a link building proposal

How many links, at which real offer prices, for how much. Before the client asks.

See the real gap

Which competitor links are bought or spam, so you stop chasing a number that was never real.

Find real link sources

Sites that link to several of your competitors but not to you, as a CSV.

It also works for

A new site starting from zero

You're spending your own money, so every link has to earn its place. The plan shows which first links matter most and where the effect starts to flatten. That curve is a model, not a ranking forecast.

Checking a marketplace basket before you pay

Import a portal's offers and let linkgap price them. Offers whose DR isn't backed by the site's traffic or price are flagged and left out, so you don't pay for an inflated score.

Four steps: check, clean, compare, plan.

One question per screen, answered with numbers you can check.

  1. Check

    Enter your domain. linkgap fetches your backlinks and suggests competitors: sites that get links from the same places you do. You can always enter competitors yourself. You don't need a data account; checks run on linkgap's, out of your data allowance. The result is one card: the gap, your good linking sites, how many competitors were analysed, and a warning when a link network is involved. Sample projects are badged as samples, so made-up numbers never mix with real ones.

    The linkgap checks screen with a four-step setup checklist at three of four, a new check card, and two project cards: nordblick-magazin.de showing gap 217, 0 good domains, 7 competitors and a 1 link network warning, and a sample project carrying an amber Sample badge.
    Swipe sideways for the rest of the screen. Open the full screenshot

  2. Clean

    Every linking site is rated good, weak or spam by rules you can see: spam score, very low authority, how many sites it links out to, spammy anchor texts, broken links. Hover a reason and it shows how many points it added and where the threshold is. Disagree? Change the verdict for one site or many at once, and undo it if you change your mind.

    The referring domains screen for the leading competitor, fachblick-journal.de: a quality bar reading good 695 at 70 percent, weak 11, spam 294 at 29 percent, an amber badge saying sampled 1,000 of 25,216 referring domains, and a table where each row carries reason chips such as medium spam score 45 plus 25 and very low authority plus 20.
    Swipe sideways for the rest of the screen. Open the full screenshot

  3. Compare

    With the spam and networks out, the comparison means something: how many good linking sites you're behind the typical competitor, the average of the top three or the leader. Then the other half of the answer: every good site that links to at least two competitors and not to you. Here that was 2,221 sources, 84 of them strong enough to go after first. Export them as CSV.

    The link sources screen with tabs reading Worth chasing 84, All 2,221 and My shortlist 0, and a table of sites with their authority, how many competitors they link to, which ones, whether they are for sale on a portal, and a Shortlist button on each row.
    Swipe sideways for the rest of the screen. Open the full screenshot

  4. Plan

    Set a budget. linkgap picks from real marketplace offers, cheapest first or best value per euro, skips sites that already link to you, and shows surcharges and writing fees as their own columns, so the total is what you'd actually pay. In this case €1,500 bought 11 links for €1,388.58. More on what that buys you below.

    The plan screen, titled What a budget buys you: about 80 paid links match the competitor's link strength, about €10,500. Three meters show a budget of €1,388.58 of €1,500, links 11 of 80, and an estimated effect of 63.6%. Below, a flattening curve and a table from 1 link at €68.50 through 10 links at €1,138.58 for 62.7% to 80 links at about €10,500 for 100%, and the list of the 11 offers bought, with DR, base price, surcharge and total.
    Swipe sideways for the rest of the screen. Open the full screenshot

Link networks

The 364-site network three competitors were sharing.

A link network is a group of sites that exist to pass links, usually sold as a package. Here, 364 unrelated sites linked to the same three competitors and to nobody else we measured. They also shared the same authority scores over and over: 83 sites all had authority 51, 50 had 23, 25 had 79. Real sites rarely share exact scores like that. linkgap flags the group, shows the evidence, and stops counting it.

Why it was flagged

Exclusive footprint
Every one of the 364 sites links to at least 2 of these 3 competitors, and to no other analysed site.
Repeated scores
The same authority values again and again: 51 ×83, 23 ×50, 79 ×25.
Very low authority
Median authority 2 out of 100.
Unrelated topics
Only 46 of 364 site names share even a word with the competitors' own names.
Brand or empty anchors
65% of the links carry no anchor text at all, or just the name of the site they point to.

What it was worth

Good linking sitesbefore → after

  • wissenspost.depreviously 546 → 203
  • blaufeder-journal.depreviously 491 → 217
  • stadtanzeiger-plus.depreviously 635 → 477
  • Typical competitorpreviously 546 → 217

Nearly two thirds of one competitor's profile was the network. It's a pattern, not proof. One click on Not a network puts those sites back into every count, and you can undo it.

All five signs, with a spreadsheet check for each: how to spot a link network.

The link networks screen showing Network 1 marked Active: 364 domains link only to these 3 competitors, a why-this-was-flagged panel listing exclusive footprint, repeated rank values, very low authority, unrelated topics and brand or empty anchors, a before and after table of good referring domains per competitor with the median baseline going from 546 to 217, example member domains, and a Not a network button.
Swipe sideways for the rest of the screen. Open the full screenshot

Check your own competitors Free during early access.

What a budget buys you.

For a new site, the first links matter most, and each one after that adds a little less. linkgap weighs links by authority instead of counting them, so a strong bought link can stand in for several of the weak ones behind a competitor's number. The effect figures are a model, not a ranking forecast.

  • 10 links carry 63% of the estimated effect, for about €1,100 (model, not a ranking forecast)
  • 11 links for €1,388.58 on a €1,500 budget: 63.6% of the way to the competitor's link strength (model)
  • about 80 paid links, about €10,500, to match their link strength in full, not 217
  • Real prices. Offers come from Collaborator.pro's catalogue or from any portal's CSV export. Surcharges for sensitive topics and writing fees are shown as separate columns.
  • No inflated scores. Offers whose DR isn't backed by the site's traffic or price are flagged and left out of the plan.

Why about 80 and not 217: the sites behind the gap are mostly weak (median authority 1 of 100), and the offers here average DR 49.7, worth about 2.7 of them each.

linkgap sells no links. Google expects paid links to carry rel="sponsored"; unmarked paid links are bought at your own risk.

The whole calculation, offer by offer: what link building costs. With your own numbers: link budget calculator (an estimate).

Check your own competitors Free during early access.

Where the data comes from, and where yours goes.

Backlink data comes from DataForSEO and link prices from Collaborator.pro, both on linkgap's accounts. You don't need an account with either, and you always see how much of your allowance is left. It works for any domain DataForSEO has data for; the price catalogue is Collaborator.pro's, and offers from any other portal come in as CSV.

Works today

DataForSEO

Backlinks, linking sites, competitors and spam score. Its 0–1000 rank is shown as authority 0–100 throughout.

Works today

Collaborator.pro

Link offers from the catalogue, so the plan works with what placements really cost.

Works today

CSV import

Offers from any portal's export; domain and price are the only required columns.

Coming later

Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz, Majestic

Described in the app so you can plan for them. The connections aren't built yet, and the app says so.

  • No surprise costs. Every action that costs data shows its estimate first. A check that wouldn't fit into what's left is refused before a single request goes out. Sample projects cost nothing.
  • Hosted in Frankfurt. Your projects are visible to your account only. Passwords are stored scrambled (salted scrypt hashes), and sessions only travel over HTTPS.
  • No tracking here. This page has no analytics and loads nothing from other servers.

What it is not.

The app is strict about its own numbers, so this page should be strict about the app.

  • Not open to everyone at once

    Every check buys real data, so each new account is approved by hand, usually within one working day. You can sign in right after registering and explore a sample project while you wait. There's no email yet: sign in again and the app tells you on screen whether you're in.

  • Early access, not finished

    It does what this page shows. Beyond that there are rough edges. Report one and it goes on the list.

  • Large profiles are sampled

    For the leader here, 1,000 of 25,216 linking sites were fetched. Those counts are labelled as estimates on every screen.

  • No outreach inbox, no rank tracking

    No email sequences, no CRM. It stops at a shortlist, a plan and an export.

  • English and German only

    The app speaks English and German; switch at sign-in or at the bottom of the sidebar. No other languages yet.

Words you'll see.

Plain meanings, and the label each one has in the app.

Linking sites in the app: referring domains
Different websites that link to a site. Ten links from one website count as one linking site.
Authority and DR in the app: Authority, DR
Authority is a 0–100 strength score for a website, based on DataForSEO's data. DR is the similar score link portals advertise on their offers. They're related, not identical.
Typical competitor in the app: median
The competitor in the middle when you line them all up. One giant or one tiny competitor doesn't skew it.
Sampled in the app: sampled, estimate
For very large profiles only part is fetched, and the totals are estimated from it. linkgap always labels these.
Link strength in the app: link strength, link value
Links weighted by authority instead of simply counted, so one strong site outweighs several weak ones.
Estimated effect in the app: Estimated effect (model)
How far a set of links gets you towards a competitor's link strength, on a curve where the first links count most. A model, not a ranking forecast.

Questions about linkgap

What is a backlink gap?

The number of good referring domains you are behind a competitor, and the list of sites that link to your competitors but not to you. linkgap measures against the middle competitor by default, after spam and link networks shared by several competitors are taken out. How to do it by hand: backlink gap analysis in seven steps.

Isn't buying links against Google's rules?

Google's spam policies name buying links for ranking purposes as link spam. linkgap takes bought networks out of the count, sells no links, makes no ranking promise, and only plans with offers whose DR is backed by traffic or price. The list of link sources is just as useful for earning links. Google expects paid links to carry rel="sponsored"; unmarked paid links are bought at your own risk. Whether and how you build links is your decision.

Ahrefs and Semrush already have a gap tool. Why this?

Keep using them. Their gap tools list the sites that link to your competitors and not to you. linkgap takes a link network shared by several competitors out of that gap and prices the rest from real marketplace offers. Use both.

How does the data compare with Ahrefs or Semrush?

Backlinks come from DataForSEO's own index, so counts will differ from other tools, as they do between any two backlink indexes. linkgap's authority is DataForSEO's rank on a 0–100 scale; it is not Ahrefs DR.

Why do I have to wait?

Every account is approved by hand, because every check spends real money on data. That usually happens within one working day. There's no email yet, so check back: sign in again and the app tells you on screen whether you're in. Until then you can explore a sample project, free. Questions go to seeberger.solutions@gmail.com.

What does it cost?

Nothing during early access. Every approved account gets $3 of live data. On a real run, one site plus seven competitors cost $0.94, so that's about three full analyses, and no single profile can cost more than $0.27. Sample projects cost nothing. Paid plans will come; the price isn't set yet.

What happens when the $3 are used up?

The app refuses any check that wouldn't fit before a request goes out; nothing is ever charged. If you need more during early access, write to us.

Can I use it for client sites?

Yes. Each check is one site plus its competitors, and you can run as many as your data allowance covers. Overviews and plans print to a PDF you can hand to the client.

What data sources does it use?

DataForSEO for backlinks and Collaborator.pro for link offers, both on linkgap's accounts. CSV import handles offers from any other portal. Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz and Majestic are coming later; they aren't connected yet.

What can I take with me?

Link sources export as CSV, and the spam linking to your own site exports as a plain text file you can use as the start of a disavow file. Overviews and plans print to a clean PDF you can hand to a client.

Should I disavow the spam linking to my site?

Usually not. Google says most sites don't need its disavow tool; it is meant for a large number of spammy or artificial links that caused a manual action, or likely will. If that is your situation, linkgap exports the spam linking to your own site as a plain text file you can use as the start of a disavow file.

Is my data private?

Your projects belong to your account alone; to anyone else they don't exist. Passwords are stored as salted scrypt hashes, sessions travel only over HTTPS, and the app runs in Frankfurt. There's no analytics or tracking on this page.

Guides and a free calculator.

Worked examples from the same real case, to rebuild by hand or to show a client.

New and growing

Built by one person, shaped by the first users.

linkgap is new. One founder builds and runs it in Germany. You talk to the person who writes the code, and your feedback changes what gets built next.

seeberger.solutions@gmail.com

Find out how far behind you really are.

Create a free account

Every account is approved by hand, usually within one working day. Then you have $3 of live data, about three full analyses. There's no email yet: sign in again to see whether you're in.