How to find your competitors' backlinks, and which ones you can get

To find your competitors' backlinks worth copying, compare your domain with two to five competitors of comparable size in a link intersect or backlink gap tool, and keep the sites that link to two or more of them but not to you. Those sites already cover your category, so they need the least persuasion to add you.

A full list of one competitor's backlinks is mostly noise: press about their funding, partner pages, old guest posts. The overlap between several competitors is the signal. Below is how to pull it with free and paid tools, how to sort it by link type, and which of those links a new product can realistically get. Every tool limit was checked on the tool's own page in September 2026.

How do you see a competitor's backlinks?

Enter the competitor's domain into a backlink tool that has its own index of the web. Google Search Console won't help, because its Links report only covers properties you have verified. Free tiers show a sample; paid tiers show everything and add the comparison features that make the intersect method fast.

Semrush notes that every tool counts differently: "each one uses its own crawler, database, and rules for counting links." So don't be surprised when the lists differ; any site that shows up in two tools for two competitors is a strong prospect.

How do you pick which competitors to compare?

Pick two to five competitors of comparable size who sell to the same buyer. Comparable size matters more than fame. A category leader's links come from press, investors and partners you can't reach yet; a competitor with a link profile near yours earned its links the way you can earn yours.

A practical test for comparable size: the competitor's count of referring domains sits somewhere between a fifth of yours and five times yours. Check it in any of the tools above. If you have almost no links yet, choose products that launched in the last year or two, not the market leader.

Good picks share three traits with you:

• The same buyer, so the sites that cover them are read by your customers.
• A similar price range, so the same roundups and review sites list them.
• A similar age, so their links came from the same kinds of launches and listings.

How does the link-intersect method work?

Put your domain and your chosen competitors into an intersect tool, ask for sites that link to at least two of the competitors, and exclude any site that already links to you. The result is a list of sites that cover your category repeatedly while leaving you out.

With a paid tool, the steps are short:

1. Open Ahrefs' Link Intersect, Moz's Link Intersect or Semrush's Backlink Gap.
2. Enter your domain as the target and two to five competitors as the comparison sites.
3. Filter to referring domains that link to at least two competitors, and exclude domains that link to you.
4. Export the list, sorted by how many competitors each domain links to.
5. Open the top 30 or so linking pages by hand before you plan any outreach.

With free tools, you can do the same by hand:

1. Run each competitor through Ahrefs' free checker and copy the top 100 backlinks into one spreadsheet, one tab per competitor.
2. Add a column with the linking domain only, stripped of www. and paths.
3. Count how many competitors each domain appears for. A pivot table or COUNTIF over the domain column does it.
4. Keep domains that appear for two or more competitors, then remove any that already link to you (check your own Search Console Links report under Top linking sites).

The free version only sees each competitor's top links, so it misses the long tail. It still finds the most visible shared sites, and those are the ones to pitch first.

How do you sort competitor backlinks by type?

Open each linking page and file it under one type, because the type decides whether you can get it and how to ask. Ahrefs groups replicable links the same way: directory listings, listicles that mention several competitors, interviews and podcasts, and guest posts.

Ahrefs makes a useful point about roundups: "the best opportunities come from listicles mentioning multiple competitors because the topic of the page is more likely to be relevant to your business." How to get onto those lists, including the ones AI answers cite, is in getting into 'best X tools' articles.

Which competitor backlinks can you realistically get?

The realistic ones are open by design: listings anyone can submit to, review sites anyone can claim, roundups whose authors update them, and resource pages whose owners want the best links for their readers. Links tied to a competitor's news, partnerships or payments are not yours to copy.

Prioritise in this order:

1. Listings and directories that link to two or more competitors. Submitting takes minutes, and the terms are published.
2. Review platforms where your competitors have profiles. Claim yours with the same product name, URL and description.
3. Roundups and "best X" articles updated in the last year. An author who updates a list is open to additions.
4. Resource pages maintained by communities, schools or associations your buyers belong to.
5. Guest posts and podcasts, once you have a story or expertise that host's audience wants.

Skip anything that only exists because someone paid. Google's link spam policy lists "exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links" among its examples, so copying a competitor's bought links copies their risk. For how these fit into a first link plan, see how to get backlinks for a new website.

How do you ask for the link?

Make one short, specific ask per site, written for that site's reader rather than for you. Name the page, say what you'd add and why its readers would want it, and give the exact facts the owner needs. One follow-up at most.

For a roundup author, four sentences are enough: the article's title, the product it would sit beside, what your product does differently in one line, and your price and a link. For a directory, just submit. For a resource page, point at the section your tool fits and explain the fit for their audience. If you would rather hand the outreach to someone, link building for startups covers what a provider should deliver.

See your competitor link gap in the full audit

LaunchScaler's full audit reads your link profile and your competitors' from a live link index. It picks competitors of comparable size, meaning the sites you share the most links with whose referring-domain count sits between a fifth of yours and five times yours, and lists the sites that link to all of them but not to you. The gap check clears when that list is smaller than your own count of linking sites; up to five times your count is flagged as work worth doing. A separate link-intersect check flags every site that covers all of your comparable competitors and leaves you out, and both open to the gap list and the fix. Backlinks are not in the free scan, so run the free scan first, then open the full audit from your report for $19, one time, for your domain. Run the free scan first, then open the full audit.