Backlinks Summary


This endpoint will provide you with an overview of backlinks data available for a given domain, subdomain, or webpage.

checked POST
Pricing

Your account will be charged for each request.
The cost can be calculated on the Pricing page.

All POST data should be sent in the JSON format (UTF-8 encoding). The task setting is done using the POST method. When setting a task, you should send all task parameters in the task array of the generic POST array. You can send up to 2000 API calls per minute, each Live API call can contain only one task. The maximum number of calls that can be sent simultaneously is limited to 30.

You can specify the number of results you want to retrieve, filter and sort them.

Below you will find a detailed description of the fields you can use for setting a task.

Description of the fields for setting a task:

Field nameTypeDescription
targetstring

domain, subdomain or webpage to get data for
required field
a domain or a subdomain should be specified without https:// and www.
a page should be specified with absolute URL (including http:// or https://)

include_subdomainsboolean

indicates if the subdomains of the target will be included in the search
optional field
if set to false, the subdomains will be ignored
default value: true

include_indirect_linksboolean

indicates if indirect links to the target will be included in the results
optional field
if set to true, the results will include data on indirect links pointing to a page that either redirects to the target, or points to a canonical page
if set to false, indirect links will be ignored
default value: true

exclude_internal_backlinksboolean

indicates if internal backlinks from subdomains to the target will be excluded from the results
optional field
if set to true, the results will not include data on internal backlinks from subdomains of the same domain as target
if set to false, internal links will be included in the results
default value: true

internal_list_limitinteger

maximum number of elements within internal arrays
optional field
you can use this field to limit the number of elements within the following arrays:
referring_links_tld
referring_links_types
referring_links_attributes
referring_links_platform_types
referring_links_semantic_locations

default value: 10
maximum value: 1000

backlinks_status_typestring

set what backlinks to return and count
optional field
you can use this field to choose what backlinks will be returned and used for aggregated metrics for your target;
possible values:
all - all backlinks will be returned and counted;
live - backlinks found during the last check will be returned and counted;
lost - lost backlinks will be returned and counted;

default value: live

backlinks_filtersarray

filter the backlinks of your target
optional field
you can use this field to filter the initial backlinks that will be included in the dataset for aggregated metrics for your target
you can filter the backlinks by all fields available in the response of this endpoint
using this parameter, you can include only dofollow backlinks in the response and create a flexible backlinks dataset to calculate the metrics for
example:
"backlinks_filters": ["dofollow", "=", true]

rank_scalestring

defines the scale used for calculating and displaying the rank, domain_from_rank, and page_from_rank values
optional field

you can use this parameter to choose whether rank values are presented on a 0–100 or 0–1000 scale

possible values:
one_hundred — rank values are displayed on a 0–100 scale
one_thousand — rank values are displayed on a 0–1000 scale

default value: one_thousand

learn more about how this parameter works and how ranking metrics are calculated in this Help Center article

tagstring

user-defined task identifier
optional field
the character limit is 255
you can use this parameter to identify the task and match it with the result
you will find the specified tag value in the data object of the response

As a response of the API server, you will receive JSON-encoded data containing a tasks array with the information specific to the set tasks.

Description of the fields in the results array:

Field nameTypeDescription
versionstring

the current version of the API

status_codeinteger

general status code
you can find the full list of the response codes here
Note: we strongly recommend designing a necessary system for handling related exceptional or error conditions

status_messagestring

general informational message
you can find the full list of general informational messages here

timestring

execution time, seconds

costfloat

total tasks cost, USD

tasks_countinteger

the number of tasks in the tasks array

tasks_errorinteger

the number of tasks in the tasks array returned with an error

tasksarray

array of tasks

    idstring

task identifier
unique task identifier in our system in the UUID format

    status_codeinteger

status code of the task
generated by DataForSEO; can be within the following range: 10000-60000
you can find the full list of the response codes here

    status_messagestring

informational message of the task
you can find the full list of general informational messages here

    timestring

execution time, seconds

    costfloat

cost of the task, USD

    result_countinteger

number of elements in the result array

    patharray

URL path

    dataobject

contains the same parameters that you specified in the POST request

    resultarray

array of results

        targetstring

target in a POST array

        first_seenstring

date and time when our crawler found the backlink for the target for the first time
in the UTC format: “yyyy-mm-dd hh-mm-ss +00:00”
example:
2019-11-15 12:57:46 +00:00

        lost_datestring

date and time when the backlink was lost
indicates the date and time when our crawler visited the target and it responded with a 4xx or 5xx status code or when its last backlink was removed
in the UTC format: “yyyy-mm-dd hh-mm-ss +00:00”
example:
2019-11-15 12:57:46 +00:00

        rankinteger

target rank
learn more about the metric and how it is calculated in this help center article

        backlinksinteger

indicates the number of backlinks

        backlinks_spam_scoreinteger

spam score of the backlinks
displays the total spam score of all backlinks pointing to the target domain, subdomain, or webpage;
to learn more about how the metric is calculated, refer to this Help Center page

        crawled_pagesinteger

number of crawled pages for the target

        infoobject

information about the target

            serverstring

server

            cmsstring

content management system

            platform_typearray

platform type

            ip_addressstring

IP address of the target

            countrystring

country code that the target domain is determined to belong to

            is_ipboolean

indicates if the target is IP
if true, the domain, subdomain or webpage functions as an IP address and does not have a domain name

            target_spam_scoreinteger

spam score of the target
if the target is a domain/subdomain, this fields indicates the average spam score of all pages of that domain/subdomain;
learn more about how the metric is calculated on this help center page

        internal_links_countinteger

number of internal links
calculated as the sum of internal links on the pages of the specified target

        external_links_countinteger

number of external links on the page
calculated as the sum of external links on the pages of the specified target

        broken_backlinksinteger

number of broken backlinks
number of broken backlinks pointing to the target

        broken_pagesinteger

number of broken pages
number of pages on the target that respond with 4xx or 5xx status codes

note that the number of broken pages includes pages on the target discovered by following external links, but it may also include pages discovered by following the target's sitemap

        referring_domainsinteger

indicates the number of referring domains
referring domains include subdomains that are counted as separate domains for this metric

        referring_domains_nofollowinteger

number of domains pointing at least one nofollow link to the target

        referring_main_domainsinteger

indicates the number of referring main domains

        referring_main_domains_nofollowinteger

number of main domains pointing at least one nofollow link to the target

        referring_ipsinteger

number of referring IP addresses
number of IP addresses pointing to this page

        referring_subnetsinteger

number of referring subnetworks

        referring_pagesinteger

indicates the number of pages pointing to the target

        referring_links_tldobject

top-level domains of the referring links
contains top level domains and referring link count per each

        referring_links_typesobject

types of referring links
indicates the types of the referring links and link count per each type
possible values:
anchor, image, link, meta, canonical, alternate, redirect

        referring_links_attributesobject

link attributes of the referring links
indicates link attributes of the referring links and link count per each attribute
example values:
nofollow, noopener, noreferrer, external, ugc, sponsored

        referring_links_platform_typesobject

types of referring platforms
indicates referring platform types and and link count per each platform

possible values: cms, blogs, ecommerce, message-boards, wikis, news, organization

        referring_links_semantic_locationsobject

semantic locations of the referring links
indicates semantic elements in HTML where the referring links are located and link count per each semantic location

you can get the full list of semantic elements here
example values:
article, section, summary, ""

        referring_links_countriesobject

ISO country codes of the referring links
indicates ISO country codes of the domains where the referring links are located and the link count per each country

        referring_pages_nofollowinteger

number of referring pages pointing at least one nofollow link to the target

‌‌

Instead of ‘login’ and ‘password’ use your credentials from https://app.dataforseo.com/api-access

# Instead of 'login' and 'password' use your credentials from https://app.dataforseo.com/api-access 
login="login" 
password="password" 
cred="$(printf ${login}:${password} | base64)" 
curl --location --request POST "https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/backlinks/summary/live" 
--header "Authorization: Basic ${cred}"  
--header "Content-Type: application/json" 
--data-raw '[
    {
    	"target": "explodingtopics.com",
    	"internal_list_limit": 10,
    	"include_subdomains": true,
    	"backlinks_filters": ["dofollow", "=", true],
    	"backlinks_status_type": "all"
    }
]'
<?php
// You can download this file from here https://cdn.dataforseo.com/v3/examples/php/php_RestClient.zip
require('RestClient.php');
$api_url = 'https://api.dataforseo.com/';
// Instead of 'login' and 'password' use your credentials from https://app.dataforseo.com/api-access
$client = new RestClient($api_url, null, 'login', 'password');
$post_array = array();
// simple way to set a task
$post_array[] = array(
   "target" => "explodingtopics.com",
   "internal_list_limit" => 10,
   "include_subdomains" => true,
   "backlinks_filters" => ["dofollow", "=", true],
   "backlinks_status_type" => "all"
);
try {
   // POST /v3/backlinks/summary/live
   $result = $client->post('/v3/backlinks/summary/live', $post_array);
   print_r($result);
   // do something with post result
} catch (RestClientException $e) {
   echo "n";
   print "HTTP code: {$e->getHttpCode()}n";
   print "Error code: {$e->getCode()}n";
   print "Message: {$e->getMessage()}n";
   print  $e->getTraceAsString();
   echo "n";
}
$client = null;
?>
const post_array = [];

post_array.push({
    	"target": "explodingtopics.com",
    	"internal_list_limit": 10,
    	"include_subdomains": true,
    	"backlinks_filters": ["dofollow", "=", true],
    	"backlinks_status_type": "all"
});

const axios = require('axios');

axios({
  method: 'post',
  url: 'https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/backlinks/summary/live',
  auth: {
    username: 'login',
    password: 'password'
  },
  data: post_array,
  headers: {
    'content-type': 'application/json'
  }
}).then(function (response) {
  var result = response['data']['tasks'];
  // Result data
  console.log(result);
}).catch(function (error) {
  console.log(error);
});
from client import RestClient
# You can download this file from here https://cdn.dataforseo.com/v3/examples/python/python_Client.zip
client = RestClient("login", "password")
post_data = dict()
# simple way to set a task
post_data[len(post_data)] = dict(
    target="explodingtopics.com",
    internal_list_limit=10,
    include_subdomains=True,
    backlinks_filters=["dofollow", "=", True],
    backlinks_status_type="all"
)
# POST /v3/backlinks/summary/live
response = client.post("/v3/backlinks/summary/live", post_data)
# you can find the full list of the response codes here https://docs.dataforseo.com/v3/appendix/errors
if response["status_code"] == 20000:
    print(response)
    # do something with result
else:
    print("error. Code: %d Message: %s" % (response["status_code"], response["status_message"]))
using Newtonsoft.Json;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Net.Http.Headers;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
namespace DataForSeoDemos
{
    public static partial class Demos
    {
        public static async Task backlinks_summary_live()
        {
            var httpClient = new HttpClient
            {
                BaseAddress = new Uri("https://api.dataforseo.com/"),
                // Instead of 'login' and 'password' use your credentials from https://app.dataforseo.com/api-access
                DefaultRequestHeaders = { Authorization = new AuthenticationHeaderValue("Basic", Convert.ToBase64String(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes("login:password"))) }
            };
            var postData = new List<object>();
            postData.Add(new
            {
                target = "explodingtopics.com",
                internal_list_limit = 10,
                include_subdomains = true,
                backlinks_status_type = "all",
                backlinks_filters = new object[]
                {
                    new object[] { "dofollow", "=", true }
                }
            });
            // POST /v3/backlinks/summary/live
            // the full list of possible parameters is available in documentation
            var taskPostResponse = await httpClient.PostAsync("/v3/backlinks/summary/live", new StringContent(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(postData)));
            var result = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>(await taskPostResponse.Content.ReadAsStringAsync());
            // you can find the full list of the response codes here https://docs.dataforseo.com/v3/appendix/errors
            if (result.status_code == 20000)
            {
                // do something with result
                Console.WriteLine(result);
            }
            else
                Console.WriteLine($"error. Code: {result.status_code} Message: {result.status_message}");
        }
    }
}

The above command returns JSON structured like this:

{
  "version": "0.1.20230825",
  "status_code": 20000,
  "status_message": "Ok.",
  "time": "1.0162 sec.",
  "cost": 0.02003,
  "tasks_count": 1,
  "tasks_error": 0,
  "tasks": [
    {
      "id": "09291809-1535-0265-0000-8d49256fe2ad",
      "status_code": 20000,
      "status_message": "Ok.",
      "time": "0.9619 sec.",
      "cost": 0.02003,
      "result_count": 1,
      "path": [
        "v3",
        "backlinks",
        "summary",
        "live"
      ],
      "data": {
        "api": "backlinks",
        "function": "summary",
        "target": "explodingtopics.com",
        "internal_list_limit": 10,
        "include_subdomains": true,
        "backlinks_filters": [
          "dofollow",
          "=",
          true
        ],
        "backlinks_status_type": "all"
      },
      "result": [
        {
          "target": "explodingtopics.com",
          "first_seen": "2020-01-18 11:50:58 +00:00",
          "lost_date": null,
          "rank": 371,
          "backlinks": 41245,
          "backlinks_spam_score": 8,
          "crawled_pages": 2150,
          "info": {
            "server": "cloudflare",
            "cms": null,
            "platform_type": [
              "unknown"
            ],
            "ip_address": "172.67.129.80",
            "country": "US",
            "is_ip": false,
            "target_spam_score": 0
          },
          "internal_links_count": 25507,
          "external_links_count": 18419,
          "broken_backlinks": 209,
          "broken_pages": 265,
          "referring_domains": 12372,
          "referring_domains_nofollow": 0,
          "referring_main_domains": 11438,
          "referring_main_domains_nofollow": 0,
          "referring_ips": 10401,
          "referring_subnets": 6427,
          "referring_pages": 38786,
          "referring_links_tld": {
            "com": 26012,
            "pics": 1964,
            "net": 1080,
            "org": 1031,
            "info": 670,
            "hu": 548,
            "co.uk": 527,
            "io": 481,
            "best": 416,
            "co": 299
          },
          "referring_links_types": {
            "anchor": 36666,
            "redirect": 1906,
            "image": 210,
            "canonical": 4
          },
          "referring_links_attributes": {
            "noopener": 8960,
            "noreferrer": 3908,
            "external": 167,
            "sponsored": 34,
            "ugc": 20,
            "alternate": 2
          },
          "referring_links_platform_types": {
            "unknown": 15196,
            "cms": 13222,
            "blogs": 12985,
            "organization": 9525,
            "message-boards": 2679,
            "news": 2295,
            "ecommerce": 36
          },
          "referring_links_semantic_locations": {
            "": 20318,
            "article": 12403,
            "section": 3907,
            "main": 1595,
            "details": 366,
            "figcaption": 116,
            "figure": 38,
            "header": 28,
            "aside": 5,
            "nav": 4
          },
          "referring_links_countries": {
            "": 27445,
            "US": 3867,
            "WW": 1439,
            "IN": 738,
            "GB": 602,
            "IO": 440,
            "CO": 275,
            "DE": 259,
            "IT": 196,
            "BR": 181
          },
          "referring_pages_nofollow": 0
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}