Open almost any SEO tool and you'll see two numbers sitting next to each other: backlinks and referring domains. They sound similar, and it's easy to skim past the difference. It matters more than it looks.
The difference, in one sentence
Backlinks count every individual link pointing to a page or domain. Referring domains count how many unique websites those links come from. A single site can link to you a hundred times — in a footer, a sidebar, across a dozen blog posts — and that's a hundred backlinks from one referring domain.
Why referring domains is usually the more honest number
Search engines have gotten good at recognizing when a large backlink count comes from a small number of sources — especially when those sources look like link farms, PBNs, or low-effort directory listings built specifically to inflate link counts. A domain with 10,000 backlinks from 40 referring domains is a much weaker (and more suspicious-looking) profile than a domain with 2,000 backlinks from 800 referring domains.
That's why, when you're sizing up a domain — a competitor, a guest post prospect, a site you're thinking about acquiring — referring domain count is usually the faster, more reliable gut-check. It's harder to fake convincingly, and it tends to track more closely with genuine authority than a raw backlink total does.
A domain with fewer total backlinks but more referring domains is often the stronger site, not the weaker one.
Check it yourself
Referring domain count is one of the three numbers Domaniro shows for any domain, alongside its Domain Score and global rank — try it on a site you're evaluating right now:
What counts as a "good" referring domain count?
There's no universal threshold — it depends entirely on the niche and the competition. A local service business might be in solid shape with referring domains in the double digits. A national publication or a well-known SaaS product might have thousands. The number that actually matters is relative: how does this domain compare to others ranking for the same terms, in the same space?
That's why referring domains is most useful as a comparison tool, not a pass/fail test. Checking it for a handful of competing or comparable domains — not just the one you're interested in — is what turns the number into an actual decision.
A common mistake: only checking the number once
Referring domain counts move — a site earns new links, loses old ones as pages get taken down, or in the worst case gets caught building a stack of low-quality links that later get penalized or disavowed by whoever placed them. If you're tracking a domain over time (your own site, a client's, a competitor's), a single snapshot only tells you where things stand today, not which direction they're heading.
See referring domains, Domain Score, and rank on every search result.
Free forever, no login required.
Add to Chrome — free
Referring domain and Domain Score figures shown by Domaniro come from an independent web-graph analysis and are estimates, not an exhaustive backlink audit. Use them to compare domains against each other, not as an exact or official count.