Glossary
A glossary for people who list software tools
These are the backlink words you will meet when you add scores to a directory, defined the way a directory owner uses them.
SEO Tools AI research team ·
How to use this list
Skim it once. Return when a term trips you.
Entries are ordered by when you meet them in a directory project, not alphabetically, so the first few are the ones every listing needs before you pick a backlinks analyzer tool or an API. Each entry ends where it touches your work: the field reference shows the column, and the checker comparison shows who offers what.
The terms, in the order you meet them
Backlink
A link from another site to yours. For a directory, the interesting direction is the links pointing at each listed tool's own website.
Referring domain
A distinct site that links to a page. Fifty links from one blog count as one referring domain, which is why this number beats a raw link count.
Domain Rating (DR)
Our 0-100 score: round(100 log(ref_domains + 1) / log(2 10^7)). It is a log scale, so going from 40 to 50 needs far more new domains than going from 10 to 20.
DR, DA and AS
Ahrefs, Moz and Semrush each compute their own version. They share a name pattern, not a number. Never print one vendor's figure under another's label.
Anchor text
The clickable words of a link. A listing whose anchors are almost all the exact product name is normal. One with a repeated commercial phrase deserves a look.
Top pages
The pages of a site that attract the most links. On a tool's site it is often a free calculator or a changelog, not the homepage.
Nofollow, sponsored, ugc
Link attributes that tell Google how to treat a link. Google has described them as hints since its 2019 announcement, so do not assume a nofollow link counts for nothing.
Link rot
A link that used to work and no longer does. Your own outbound listing links rot too, so a monthly job should check status codes beside the scores.
Refresh cadence
How often the data underneath changes. Our index is rebuilt roughly monthly, which sets the useful rhythm of any sync job built on it.
Credit
The unit of billing: 1 credit is $0.0001. Free actions cost nothing, bulk_dr and compare cost 1, refdomains and backlinks cost 2, search and keyword cost 3.
Four mix-ups that cause arguments
Readers confuse a link count with a referring-domain count. One footer link repeated on 4,000 pages of a forum is 4,000 links and one referring domain.
They also assume a high rating means a good tool. Not so. It means many sites mention it, which is common for old, popular and sometimes mediocre products. A young tool with a sharp feature set can have a rating of 18 and be the right pick for your reader.
Third, people read a drop as a penalty. It rarely is. Between two monthly refreshes, a rating can fall because a few directories that linked to the site went offline, and that is nothing to do with Google. Compare the movement with Search Console for the tool's own site only if they share it.
Last, vendors' scores are treated as interchangeable. They are not. Use one metric everywhere and say whose it is.
Rule of thumb
Print the method beside the number
If a reader cannot tell which tool produced a score, the score is decoration. A short footnote naming the source and the date fetched costs nothing and answers most of the arguments.
- Name the metric after its maker.
- Show the fetch date.
- Link to the formula if the metric is public.