Link-attack watch
Backlink extractor for catching a negative SEO attack
DarkSEO pulls referring domains, anchors and top pages for your site from a link index of 798.5 billion backlinks, so a spam flood is a number you can read, not a hunch.
- Free domain and overview lookups, no key
- Referring domains and anchors from 2 credits
- $100 starting credit, no card
$ curl "https://darkseo.net/api.php?action=overview&q=yourdomain.com&key=sk_live_..."
What it is for
A backlink extractor that answers one question: is someone building a pile against us?
Most link tools are built for people who want more links. Ours is used by site owners who suspect somebody else is adding links on their behalf, and who need evidence before they touch a disavow file.
Referring domains, newest picture first
The refdomains call lists the sites that link to you. Pull it once a month and keep the file; the change between two files is your signal. See the 48-hour runbook.
Anchors that give a flood away
Real links carry your brand, your URL and plain phrases. Floods carry pills, casinos and one phrase repeated hundreds of times. The spike thresholds page shows where to draw the line.
Top pages under pressure
toppages shows which URLs receive the links. A sudden pile on a page you never promoted is worth a closer look, and sometimes it is a hacked page.
Cheap enough to run every month
One call is billed once, whatever the number of rows. A refdomains pull is 2 credits, or $0.0002. Setup takes ten minutes in the monthly watch guide.
Checklist
Signs worth an hour of your time this week
- Search Console shows a new batch of linking domains you have never heard of
- One anchor phrase appears on dozens of new referring domains
- Links point at a URL that sells nothing and has no inbound history
- A drop in clicks arrived within days of a Google update, not before it
- Pages you did not write appear in a site: search on your own domain
- Your link count in a third-party tool jumped but your Search Console report did not
Compare
What each lookup costs when you are investigating
| Call | Credits | Cost | Use it to |
|---|---|---|---|
| domain, overview, stats, suggest | 0 | Free | Check headline numbers before spending anything |
| bulk_dr, compare, top | 1 | $0.0001 | Score up to 2,000 linking domains in a single call |
| refdomains, backlinks, anchors, toppages | 2 | $0.0002 | List who links, with which words, to which page |
| intersect | 2 | $0.0002 | Find domains linking to you and a rival at once |
| search, keyword | 3 | $0.0003 | Look for a spam phrase across anchors, titles and URLs |
- domains in our own link graph
- 181,132,097
- domain-to-domain links
- 2,774,625,913
- backlinks indexed
- ~798.5B
- free credit on sign-up
- $100
How it works
From a worrying graph to a decision in five moves
Freeze the facts
Export Search Console clicks and the links report for the last 16 months. Do this before you change anything on the site.
Pull the link list
Call refdomains and anchors for your domain, 1,000 rows at a time. Save both files with today's date in the name.
Score the newcomers
Send the new domains through bulk_dr, up to 2,000 per call. Very low scores with identical anchors are the shape of a flood.
Set the next check
The index refreshes about monthly, so check once a month and compare with the file you saved.
Our position
Detection is cheap; reacting is where people hurt themselves
Google has said for years that its systems ignore most spam links, and the December 2022 link spam update leaned further that way. Panic disavows of healthy links are a bigger risk than the attack.
- Collect evidence before any action
- Disavow only what you can defend
- Separate attacks from core-update drops using this comparison
Who it is for
What the index cannot see
Our crawler and index refresh roughly once a month. A link placed last Tuesday may not exist for us yet. Plan around that. That delay is a real limit, and it is why the index is a monthly audit tool, not an alarm bell.
For a flood that lands mid-month, Search Console's own links report may hint at it sooner, and Ahrefs, with its fresher crawl, can add detail on a paid plan. Use them for the early warning, and use DarkSEO for the cheap, repeatable record that you can diff and keep.
Who it is for
Two situations that look alike on a graph
A falling line on a traffic graph can mean a flood, an update or a plain calendar effect. Each of the three leaves its own trace, and the link list is one of the few records you can keep yourself. Work out the case first.
The two cases below come up most often. Start with the shape.
A flood with a clear shape
Hundreds of new domains, one anchor repeated and scores near zero is the pattern to take seriously. Save the exports before you change anything, then follow the 48-hour runbook.
A single flood does not settle the matter by itself. It opens a file you can read calmly, and the file decides the next step.
A quiet month with a bad graph
Sometimes the links look ordinary and the clicks still fall. Say your monthly pull shows a few dozen new referring domains, all from unrelated sites with real content. The link list then does its job by ruling the links out.
Use the attack versus update guide to test the other causes, and keep the monthly diff running so the next month has a baseline.
FAQ
Questions site owners ask first
What is a backlink extractor and can it prove a negative SEO attack?
It lists the sites, anchors and pages in your link profile as machine-readable rows. It can show that an unusual pile of links appeared. It cannot prove who built it or that Google penalised you for it.
How do I tell spam links from a real attack?
Look at shape, not count. Hundreds of new domains with the same anchor, very low Domain Rating and no topical link to you form a pattern. A handful of odd links is background noise every site collects.
Should I disavow everything that looks spammy?
No. Disavowing is for links you can defend as manipulative and that you suspect cause harm, or when you hold a manual action. For ordinary junk, ignoring it is usually the calmer and safer choice.
How often does the data update?
Roughly once a month. A link added last week may not appear yet. For a mid-month alarm, pair this with Search Console's links report, then use the monthly pull as your record.
What does a check cost?
The domain and overview lookups are free. Listing referring domains or anchors costs 2 credits, which is $0.0002 a call, whatever the number of rows. New accounts get $100 in credit.
Do I need to write code?
A single curl line is enough to start, and results are JSON you can paste into a spreadsheet. The setup guide walks through it; a cron job makes it automatic.
Can a competitor really hurt my rankings with links?
Rarely, and hard to prove. The more common story is a core update or a technical fault being blamed on links. Check both before you accuse anyone.
