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798.5 billion backlinks indexed

Backlink profile checker for anchor text distribution

Pull every anchor pointing at a domain as JSON, bucket it in a spreadsheet, and read branded against exact-match shares from our own index of 181 million domains.

Get $100 freeOpen the audit runbook
  • anchors and anchor_cloud: 2 credits a call
  • Up to 1,000 rows per call, one price
  • Free: domain, overview, stats, suggest
GET /api.php?action=domainJSON

$ curl "https://anchorsocial.org/api.php?action=anchors&q=example.com&key=sk_live_..."

How it works

One anchor audit, four moves

  1. 1

    Export the anchors

    Call anchors for your domain and page through the rows. A full pull of 5,000 rows is five calls, which is ten credits, or $0.001.

  2. 2

    Bucket them in a sheet

    Tag each row as brand, bare URL, generic, partial match or exact match. The audit runbook has the formulas.

  3. 3

    Compare with a peer set

    Run the same pull on three ranking rivals and set the shares side by side. Your own number means little alone.

  4. 4

    Diff it next month

    The index refreshes about monthly, so one snapshot per month is the honest cadence. Store the files and subtract.

What it is for

A backlink profile checker built for anchor questions

Most checkers hand you a score and a pretty chart. People who care about anchors want rows. Here is what the API gives them to chew on.

  • Raw anchors, sortable

    The anchors action returns the text people used to link to a domain, with sort and order to put the heavy hitters first. Two credits per call.

  • A cloud for the quick read

    anchor_cloud condenses the same profile into weighted terms, handy before you open a spreadsheet. See the noise myths for what to ignore.

  • Who else uses this exact phrase

    keyword finds domains linked with an exact anchor, three credits a call. Use it to see whether your money phrase is common in your niche or an outlier.

  • Cheap enough to repeat

    A hundred domains, anchors only, costs 200 credits: two cents. That price lets you build a peer baseline instead of guessing one.

What sits behind each call

domains in our own link index
181,132,097
domain-to-domain links
2,774,625,913
backlinks indexed, refreshed about monthly
798.5 billion
per anchors or anchor_cloud call ($0.0002)
2 credits
rows returned per call, billed once
1,000
free credit on sign-up
$100

Checklist

Before you trust any anchor percentage

  • Say how many rows you pulled. Forty rows is an anecdote.
  • Count each linking domain once, or state that you did not.
  • Remove your own network and footer links from the sample first.
  • Note the snapshot month; the index moves roughly monthly.
  • Compare against peers in your niche, never a universal ratio.
  • Keep the raw export so the next diff is a subtraction.

Who it is for

Why anchors get their own tooling

Anchors are the one part of a link that you can read like a sentence. Google's Penguin 4.0 in September 2016 made link evaluation real-time and mostly devaluing, so a lopsided profile is more likely ignored than punished. Still worth reading.

The spreadsheet crowd wants three things: counts, a stable method, and a price low enough to run it on every client. Our worked example shows the method on made-up numbers, and the free checker page explains where the free actions stop and paid ones start.

Be realistic about scope. No keyword research, no rank tracking, no daily crawl here. Ahrefs and Semrush cover those, and for a full anchor report with their UI you may prefer them. This is link data at a per-call price.

A first pull, then a count

Fetch anchors, check the billing field, and save the file with the month in its name.

bash
curl -s "https://anchorsocial.org/api.php?action=anchors&q=example.com&per=1000&key=sk_live_..." \
  -o anchors-2026-10.json
jq '{ok, _credits}' anchors-2026-10.json

Where we land

Good for measuring, not for diagnosing alone

The numbers tell you what your anchor mix looks like and how it differs from rivals. They do not tell you why a page dropped; that takes a Search Console read and a look at the content.

  • Use it for monthly snapshots and peer baselines
  • Pair it with the Links report in Google Search Console
  • Skip it if you need keywords or daily-fresh crawl

FAQ

Questions people type before they sign up

What is a backlink profile checker?

A tool that lists the sites and anchor texts linking to a domain. Ours reads our own index of 181,132,097 domains and returns JSON. The index refreshes about monthly, so a link from last week may not appear yet.

Can I see anchor text for free?

The free actions are domain, overview, stats and suggest, and none of them need a key. Full anchor rows come from the anchors action at 2 credits, and every account starts with $100 of credit.

How many anchors can one call return?

Up to 1,000 rows per call, billed once whatever the row count. Deeper pagination is capped at 50,000 rows, which is fifty calls and 100 credits, or one cent.

Is there an ideal branded to exact-match ratio?

No official figure exists. Google has never published one. Compare your mix with three or four ranking competitors in the same niche and treat large gaps as a prompt to look, not a verdict.

Does a lot of exact-match anchor text trigger a penalty?

Not by itself. Penguin 4.0 in September 2016 moved to real-time devaluation, and the December 2022 link spam update leaned on SpamBrain. Patterns that look bought carry more risk than a single ratio.

How do I pay and sign in?

Sign in with a Google account. Top-ups are in USDT on the TRC-20 network from the account page. There is no subscription, and a card is not requested for the free credit.

How current is the link data?

Roughly one month. Run your snapshot on the same day each month and compare like with like. For daily-fresh crawl data, Ahrefs or Semrush are the fuller choice.