If you have questions about the backlinks we show for a site on SpyFu.com, it might help to know first how we identify backlinks for a page.
When we discover a newly ranked page (A, in the image below), we crawl that specific page to find any outbound links from it. Those links point to destination pages (B), and the original page is considered a "backlink" of the destination page.
As we repeat this millions of times, we will see various links coming in to the same destination page. All of those links to the same page are shown as the page's backlinks.
Let's start with one URL, like www.paper-world.com/envelopes. We crawl that specific page (not the entire domain) for other pages that it links out to. Let's say that one of them is www.unique-stationery.com. As we repeat this for millions of keywords, we can build a list of sites that are pointing to the same destination page (www.unique-stationery.com). All of the sites like www.paper-world.com/envelopes are considered backlinks of www.unique-stationery.com.
Since we start with ranking pages, all of the backlinks you see in SpyFu have been indexed by Google within the top 100 results, AND we remove duplicates.
The backlinks tools on SpyFu help you discover and target backlinks that help your competitors rank. We added it for competitive research. Without links from unranked pages, it isn't recommended for auditing your own site.
But I know I got a link from another site, and it's not showing up in my backlink profile?
We look at ranking pages of a domain, not the entire domain itself. If a different page like paper-world.com/closed-on-monday does not rank in the Top 100, it won't hit our radar. We would not look for any of the links on that specific page.
How does that apply to International Results?
Currently, we are collecting backlink data for every site we see, but using links that are indexed on Google.com.
If you research a site on SpyFu using our data for France, the backlinks we show for that site will be from pages that are indexed on Google.com. For example, these are backlinks for lemonde.fr.
Those are accurate links to the site you searched, but the site you searched could also be getting links from other pages that we did not list.