Free overview call, no key
Backlink checker online for matching link changes to rank moves
Rankele is a JSON API over our own index of 798.5 billion backlinks. It gives analysts the link side of a ranking question, one monthly snapshot at a time, at $0.10 per 1,000 calls.
- Free domain and overview calls, no key
- Index refreshed roughly once a month
- Prepaid credit, no subscription
$ curl "https://rankele.com/api.php?action=refdomains&q=example.com&per=1000&sort=dr&order=desc&key=sk_live_..."
What it is for
A backlink checker online is only half the job: dating the change is the other half
Most checkers print today's profile. A ranking question compares two profiles that sit a month apart. Each card is one habit that keeps that comparison honest.
Snapshot first, diff second
Save the referring-domain list every month and compare the copies yourself. The diff recipe shows the request and the three columns worth keeping.
Two clocks, one calendar
Positions move on a day, our index moves on a month. The monthly runbook lines the two up without pretending to more precision than exists.
Rule out the dull causes
Core updates, template edits and tracking gaps explain more drops than links do. The suspect table sorts them by evidence.
Measure the rival with the same ruler
Pull the competitor the way you pulled yourself before you decide they out-linked you. The gap worked example walks through it.
Compare
What one lookup can answer, and what needs two snapshots
| Question you are asking | One lookup today | Two snapshots a month apart |
|---|---|---|
| How many domains link to me? | Yes | Yes, plus the trend |
| Did a link vanish before the drop? | No | Only at monthly resolution |
| Did a rival gain links this quarter? | No | Yes, if you saved their copy too |
| Is the spike in new domains real? | Partly | Yes, compare TLDs and DR bands |
| Which exact day did a link appear? | No | No. The index is not daily |
One monthly pull, saved with the date in the file name
Run it on the same day each month, from your own server. Each call is billed once however many rows come back, up to 1,000 per call.
D=$(date +%Y-%m)
curl -s "https://rankele.com/api.php?action=refdomains&q=example.com&per=1000&sort=dr&order=desc&key=sk_live_..." \
> "example.com.refdomains.$D.json"
# the response also carries _credits: the cost and your remaining balance
curl -s "https://rankele.com/api.php?action=overview&q=example.com" > "example.com.overview.$D.json"Who it is for
Why this page says matches, never caused
A link change and a rank change can sit in the same month by accident. We treat that as the default. Your job is to try to break the story before you tell it to a client.
Our index is rebuilt roughly once a month, so a link from last week may not show up yet. That is the catch. A snapshot pair brackets a drop but cannot date it. Google shipped its March 2025 core update on 13 March and the June 2025 one on 30 June, and neither fits neatly inside a month of link data.
So the output is a shortlist of suspects, not a verdict. Ahrefs and Semrush crawl faster and add keyword and rank tracking that we do not have, which makes them the better place to confirm a daily timeline.
Who it is for
Three worries that come up before the first pull
Most people who arrive here already have one worry in mind. These are the ones that show up most often in public questions about link drops, with the order we would test them in.
A footer link and a ranking drop
A sitewide footer link can look like a cause, because it appears on every page at once. It rarely is the cause alone. Check the dates first, then look for a manual action in Search Console, then go through the other suspects.
Say a footer link is new and the drop started the same week. That is a window overlap, which makes the link a suspect and not yet a verdict.
Penalty, or a drop after an update?
People often say penalty when they mean a drop after an update. Those are different things. A manual action is announced in Search Console. An algorithmic change shows up only through the pages that moved.
Nobody can promise a recovery timeline, and no link tool can measure one. Start with the suspect table and its cheapest tests.
Contacting a site before disavowing
If a site you never asked for links to you, the first question is whether the link can be removed. Asking the owner leaves a record, and a disavow file belongs at the end, for links you could not get removed.
Write down what you asked and when. The spam spike check sets out the order of steps before any file is sent.
- domains in our link graph
- 181,132,097
- domain-to-domain links
- 2,774,625,913
- per 1,000 calls at 1 credit each
- $0.10
- free credit on sign-up, no card
- $100
How it works
A first afternoon with the data
- 1
Sign in with Google
Sign-in is Google only. The $100 free credit is 1,000,000 credits and needs no card.
- 2
Pull a baseline for your domain and two rivals
Use
refdomainsat 2 credits a call. Name each file with the month, as in the snippet above. - 3
Log your own rank changes beside it
Export dates from Search Console or your tracker. The runbook gives the columns.
- 4
Repeat next month and diff
Only now is there a before and an after. The field reference lists what each action can return.
FAQ
Questions analysts ask us
Is there a backlink checker online that shows when a link was lost?
Not to the day with ours. The index is rebuilt roughly once a month, so you can say a link was present in one snapshot and absent in the next. Save a copy every month and the gap between copies becomes your timeline.
Can I check a competitor's backlinks for free?
Partly. The domain, overview and stats actions need no key and cost nothing, and they give headline numbers for any domain. Row-level lists such as refdomains cost 2 credits a call, which is $0.0002.
A tool says a backlink is lost but I can still see it. Who is right?
Possibly both. Each crawler visits a page on its own schedule, and a link can be live while a given index has not re-fetched it. Open the page itself, then compare two tools only on snapshots taken the same week.
Do I need to disavow after a sudden jump in new referring domains?
Measure first. Pull the new domains, split them by TLD and DR band, and see whether the pattern is junk or just unfamiliar. Google says most sites never need the disavow tool, so treat it as a last step.
How does your DR compare with Ahrefs DR?
It is a different number. Ours is round(100 log(ref_domains + 1) / log(2 10^7)), a log scale on referring domains alone. Use it to compare domains inside our data, never to quote against an Ahrefs figure.
What does it cost to track ten domains monthly?
As an example, ten domains with one refdomains call each is 20 credits a month, or $0.002. Add an anchors call per domain and it doubles. The $100 free credit would cover that for a very long time.
