real backlinks vs useless ones

It has come to my attention that the number of backlinks a website has, according to semrush, ahrefs, etc... is pretty much crap. At least in the sense of ones that are actually beneficial.

One of my sites, for example, has around 70k backlinks from 500 referring domains on semrush and 2.8k backlinks from 260ish domains on ahrefs. But according to GSC it has 520 backlinks from 9 domains, and Bing is roughly the same. A couple of extra referring on Bing, but otherwise extremely similar.

I'm sure this is not unusual, but it's just something I never thought much about, and now that I am, I'm curious.



This is a screenshot for the top 10 pages for the keyword "German Shepherd," a popular, difficult, and heavily searched keyword. The top 2 have significantly higher backlinks/referrings to their respective pages than the rest, but how many of those are potentially real links that GSC is seeing and weighing toward their ranking? Do numbers 4, 5, 6, and 8 look more accurate in terms of what you would see on GSC compared to the others? For reference, the keyword is assigned an 81 difficulty rating according to semrush.

GSC is never accurate, so I wouldn't trust it too much besides consulting it as a rough guideline. As a matter of fact, Ahrefs and Semrush are not always accurate, either...

Moreover, SEO is not math, so 1+1 almost never equals 2. Meaning, just because a site has more backlinks / RDs than other site doesn't mean that google will rank the one with more backlinks... or even with better ones (although it does happen a lot).

If you check 100 keywords from 100 different niches I'm sure that you'll see at least half of them outranking sites that should never be outranked. That's because google weighs over 200 signals when deciding where to rank each page. And this is especially true for low-medium competition keywords that smaller sites outrank bigger ones, more than it's true for tough keywords which seems to be dominated by highly popular and authoritative sites usually.

dragonboas said:

The top 2 have significantly higher backlinks/referrings to their respective pages than the rest, but how many of those are potentially real links that GSC is seeing and weighing toward their ranking?

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only google knows

dragonboas said:

Do numbers 4, 5, 6, and 8 look more accurate in terms of what you would see on GSC compared to the others?

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I don't think there's any correlation between the SERP spots, number of backlinks and GSC. If you'll check 10 other keywords I can almost guarantee that the results will be totally different each time.

tazarbm said:

GSC is never accurate, so I wouldn't trust it too much besides consulting it as a rough guideline. As a matter of fact, Ahrefs and Semrush are not always accurate, either...

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I know Ahrefs and Semrush are not totally accurate and I know google doesn't see everything so there are certainly existing links that don't show in GSC, but considering google controls the serp rankings does it not make sense that the links shown in GSC are the only ones influencing your page ranking? Even if others happen to exist elsewhere. Obviously just in regard to the backlinks itself, not the myriad of other factors that google considers when ranking.

dragonboas said:

considering google controls the serp rankings does it not make sense that the links shown in GSC are the only ones influencing your page ranking? Even if others happen to exist elsewhere.

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GSC only shows 1000 backlinks maximum, and there are pages with 10s of 1000s of backlinks, does this mean that google disregard the links they can't show due to GSC's limitations? No!

So, no, it doesn't make sense...

Backlinks coming from the content body of a site are what you should account for (contextual links). They could be in an article or even a resource page (I used a domain in the past that had a ton of links from resrouce pages and it ranked really well!).

Blog comments, profile links and other similar nonsense doesn't do shit, it is garbage. The only user generated links that hold some weight are forum links. Please focus on 'some'. They help boost relevancy and also contribute towards rankings (I have used them successfully). Do not spam garbage forums though, go for relevant ones. The more moderated and active the forum is, the better. Use the technique sparingly, if all your links are forums then that is not natural is it?

I use the following criteria to weigh links otherwise:

1. Make sure the host site is NOT a link farm that will sell a link to anyone willing to pay a fee. Some sites will sell a ton of links, this is just an accident waiting to happen. Sooner or later google will catch up, especially if they do not post a lot of other content that makes up for their excessive link sales.

If a site is letting you have a link with exact match keyword rich texts (especially without an additional fee), you should really vet the prospect. This is an immediate flag imo, and if a large number of sites buy links from this host with exact match anchors then it is a dead giveaway. Now this is different if you are getting a link from a well managed PBN that has limited OBL with exact match anchors and other content to make up for it (usually PBN rentals or your own personal PBN), but if it is one of those PBNs that sells a link to anyone under the sun, then again a red flag.

2. Check the link profile of the host site. This is the strongest aspect in terms of SEO power. If a site has an awesome link profile then you know it is a good prospect, even if it is not relevant. You can write content in a context that makes sense and get a link from this site.

3. Relevancy, obviously the more relevant the site is the better. However, if you look at sites all over the web their link profile does not include ONLY niche relevant sites. You want to make your site appear natural, so aim for both relevant and non-relevant links. Be strategic, for non-relevant links you have a larger pool of sites to choose from, leverage the strongest sites you can find in this case.

4. Traffic <----- this is not an SEO/Ranking factor. A site with traffic is proof that it is an actual site and not an entity set up for selling links. Don't just look at traffic numbers and call it a day, see what keywords the site ranks for. If they are useless keywords no one else is going after, then you want to vet the site excessively. Basically, a good legitimate site will be ranking for relevant keywords and not every other garbage keyword under the sun.

When buying a link, I also always google ===> sitename.com ("gambling" OR "casino" OR "pharma" OR ...... ) if it has those type fo link sales then I skip it usually. However, bigger sites that are real authorities can even sell these type of links sparingly and still be okay. So in that case, I will get a link if I get a good deal. Otherwise, I will move on.

This is all I can think of, but it should be enough to get started.

Like other tools, you can take GSC results also for a rough reference.
As there are many things to consider, only backlinks couldnt determine rankings.
Also, more than backlink counts, number of different RD matters.

Not sure about it