Backlinks tool

The Backlinks tool gives you access to the list of URLs that link to your website. These links are also called inbound links. Often these links are from webpages that discuss your products or organization. Identifying such webpages can be valuable as a means of identifying sources of promotion, feedback, or both for your website.

• Filter your results to target specific parts of your website

  If you have a lot of inbound links, you might want to use the filter functionality to better explore where they are coming from. To create a filter-based URL of the backlink, use:

  • .edu
  • domain.org
  • sub1.domain.com
  • sub2.sub1.domain.gov
  • domain.co.uk/folder1
  • domain.co.jp/folder1/folder2
  • sub1.domain.mil/folder1
  • sub2.sub1.domain.biz/folder1/folder2
• Find all external links to your website

  The results table displays all URLs linking to your website by default, including URLs within your own website. To see only links coming from third party websites:

  1. Click Filter backlinks by top-level domain, subdomain, or subfolder.
  2. Type your website’s domain name in the Filter backlinks by top-level domain, subdomain, or subfolder box.
  3. Select Exclude all results with this URL from the drop-down list.
  4. Click Search.

  For example, if your Webmaster Center account included the website msn.com, you would use the filter msn.com. If your account included a subdomain website such as autos.msn.com, you could filter on autos.msn.com.

• Identify how a specific website is referencing your website

  To find all references to your website from an external website (for example, nytimes.com):

  1. Click Filter backlinks by top-level domain, subdomain, or subfolder.
  2. Type the name of the external domain from which you want to see all backlinks to your website in the Filter backlinks by top-level domain, subdomain, or subfolder box.
  3. Select Include only results with this URL from the drop-down list.
  4. Click Search.

  This report is useful in determining how a social network or periodical is linking to and discussing your website.

• Find linking patterns from top-level domains (TLDs)

  The presence of links from top-level domains (such as .edu or .co.uk) often implies certain attributes about the links coming into your website. For example, if you are receiving many links from ".fr" or ".es", this could mean that your website is useful for that audience. Other examples include ".edu" or ".org" domains. Links from domains could indicate that there are academic publications citing your company or organization.

  To filter the results to include only links from a specific TLD:

  1. Click Filter backlinks by top-level domain, subdomain, or subfolder.
  2. Type the name of the TLD from which you want to see all backlinks to your website in the Filter backlinks by top-level domain, subdomain, or subfolder box.
  3. Select Include only results with this URL from the drop-down list.
  4. Click Search.
• Download results for analysis and reporting

  If you want to perform more in-depth analysis, or compile reports using the information this tool provides, you can use the download feature to save a CSV (comma-separated values) file with up to the first 1,000 results for the specific query.

  After generating your backlinks search report, click Download up to 1000 results to save a CSV (comma-separated values) file with up to the first 1,000 results to your computer. The file includes the column names in the first row. The file format is flexible and easily imported into Microsoft Excel or similar program for analyzing link data.

• Track results over time

  You can track both the number and the identity of backlinks in order to evaluate changes over time.

  Note

  All data provided are estimates and can change due to many factors. These numbers are approximations, not precise values.

• How do I get more backlinks?

  There are many strategies for improving the number of backlinks to your website. For information on best practices, take a look at I'm not ranking-what can I do? on the Bing Webmaster Center blog.

• Do backlinks from low quality websites adversely affect my Bing ranking?

  No. Bing identifies unwanted websites and disregards them for the purposes of ranking. This also means that using an artificial means of generating inbound links, such as those from commercial link exchanges, may not help you improve your rank.

• How accurate is this data?

  The accuracy of the backlink data can vary. Therefore, use the data as an indicator of overall backlink trends and view this data in the context of your own web server logs.

  Search engines don't store all backlink data in one location. Instead, they use a tree-like structure called distributed storage. This storage model is efficient for general backlink information, but can make getting an exact backlink count at any given time difficult. Webmaster Center strives to make the numbers as meaningful as possible. However, they are estimates and shouldn't be taken literally.

Get technical support in the Bing Webmaster Center forum