An Introduction to Referring Domains

Simply put, a referring domain is a website that links to another website. Referring domains carry backlinks from URLs on root domains and subdomains. When a referring domain links to a website, it carries backlinks to one or more 3rd party websites.

The difference between root domain, subdomain and URL

In Site Explorer, analyses can be performed at the root domain, subdomain, or individual URL. Let's look at these terms and the data provided by Majestic on these different levels.

Root domain level will return results for the whole of the domain being analysed. The root domain is the overarching structure that contains the subdomains and every URL. Root domain analysis is necessary to access the data for a web property.

Subdomains are part of the main or the root domain. There may be many different reasons to use a subdomain. Subdomains are often used to host online shops - for example, shop.website.com. Another common use of subdomains is to cover different languages or regions. Examples from Majestic would be our regional versions of the website in other languages:

• German (https://de.majestic.com/)
• Spanish (https://es.majestic.com/)
• French (https://fr.majestic.com/)
• Italian (https://it.majestic.com/)
• Japanese (https://ja.majestic.com/)
• Dutch (https://nl.majestic.com/)
• Polish (https://pl.majestic.com/)
• Portuguese (https://pt.majestic.com/)
• Chinese (https://zh.majestic.com/)

The subdomain backlink analysis may best serve you best for a specific set of backlink data. Subdomain backlink analyses are ideal for very large websites. Subdomains are subsets of the root domain, so you'll have less data to process (fewer backlinks and referring domains).

The URL level will let you see the data for any individual page within a domain. Pages make up the content that populates the domain and subdomains. As a result, you'll see fewer backlinks and referring domains for individual pages than for the subdomains or root domain in which they sit.

Why Referring Domains are Important

Referring domains is a metric that shows the number of domains in a backlink profile. In principle, the more referring domains you have, the more backlinks you have. Although there is no correlation between the number of backlinks and the number of referring domains, it is important to understand the possible correlation between referring domains and backlinks.

A high number of backlinks could be from a so-called "run of site". Run of site is typically a backlink placed indiscriminately on every website page and pointing to the same URL, in any area of the page, even with marginal visibility. Nowadays, this type of backlink is typical of lower-cost advertising campaigns. Therefore, a large number of backlinks from a referring domain is a strong indicator that anticipates a questionable quality of the backlink.

Another possibility is the presence of backlinks from the same referring domain pointing to many different pages. This is typical of a news site referring to articles.

A smaller number of backlinks is potentially a higher quality signal. Link Context can significantly reduce the effort required to create short-lists of attractive backlinks. The Link Context chart captures the location within the page's source code where the link is positioned to determine whether a backlink is in a directory page or a paragraph of text.

How You Can Use the Referring Domains Checker

Discover Unnatural Links

Backlink profile analysis is a typical SEO activity that can help prevent penalties or loss in rankings for artificial or unnatural links. Referring Domains is an essential tool to keep your backlink profile clean. A backlink profile analysis can help identify a sudden surge in backlinks from one or more referring domains. With this tool, you can identify and analyse domains with large numbers of backlinks in minutes.

If you are logged in to Majestic, the data you need is just two clicks away from the Site Explorer Home Page.

• Type your website into the Site Explorer Bar.



• Switch the option to Fresh Index. There is no need to verify the Historic Index unless this is the first time you perform this analysis. The Historic Index provides insights on the evolution of a backlink profile and can help identify the buildup of SPAM backlinks over time. The Majestic Historic Index has been upgraded and now contains over FIFTEEN years of backlink data.
• Hit enter or click on the orange magnifying glass.
• Click on the Referring Domains tab.

If the sort order is different, sort by any of the inbound backlink types of your choice: from Deleted, From Home Page, Indirect, NoFollow, HTTPS, Redirects, Textual, to images and frames.



This option will list sites based on the number of links they have pointing to you. Sorting backlinks in a backlink profile will immediately identify the presence of so-called site-wide links on your site - they are similar to run-of-site backlinks and they appear on most, if not all, of a website's pages. You can also include a second ranking factor for each domain, such as Alexa Rank or Trust Flow and Citation flow. You can evaluate the quality of these backlinks and decide whether they require additional analyses or are benign ones.

Brainstorm link building ideas with Referring Domains

Quality organic link building is about building a trustworthy relationship between two sites. A carefully crafted backlink is a far more critical signal to search engines than a footer or menu backlink. Looking at the referring domains, as opposed to the individual backlinks, can identify those businesses that may boost your brand awareness if you build a relationship with them. By focusing on referring domains, you can prioritise your link-building efforts on websites that are most likely to positively impact your rankings because of their Trust and Affinity with your business.

In addition, referring domains can provide valuable insights into the relationships between different websites. By understanding these relationships, you can target your link building efforts more effectively and focus on those opportunities where you can add valuable information to a website with a backlink to you. For example, if a website has the ambition to become an authority on a subject, editors will gladly link out to trusted third-party sources to increase the amount of information available to their readership. Referring Domains can help create this kind of link building opportunity. Of course, there are other more commercial needs to earn backlinks. Let's look at this with a real example.

Suppose you were researching home furniture retail brands. Your searches in Google and Bing frequently report a website - maidenhome.com:

• Why are they so prominent in search engines?
• What does their backlink profile look like?
• How did they attract high-quality backlinks?
• Is there a way to understand how they earned these backlinks?

Start your research with Referring Domains:

• Open Referring Domains
• Enter the website
• Order the results by Trust Flow and Citation Flow
• Review and select those websites with the highest Topical Trust Flow affinity
• Inspect the Linking URLs: For any link on the source URL, you can now look at the page in an attempt to understand why the backlink was given: you can visit the target URL to see if there is any clear strategy involved in earning the link.

At the time of this writing, our analysis identified a backlink from an article on Bloomberg, Maiden Home Aims to Disrupt Custom Furniture With $1,000 Chairs:

The article looks at this retail startup, Maiden Home, that aims to disrupt the custom furniture market by dealing directly with customers and offering chairs that might cost $6000 for a mere $1000. The article compares disruptive retail brands such as WarbyParker.com, Everlane.com and Casper.com. You could also draw valid comparisons from their backlink profiles by using the root domains of each of these companies mentioned in the article and enter them into the Bulk Backlink Checker to see how they compare:

Bulk Backlink Checker shows how the established retailers have between 10,000 and 12,500 referring domains each, whereas Maiden Home has just 503 referring domains. They must work hard to come close to their older rivals. While these sites are not in the same industry, they are disruptive brands, so their link profiles may suggest many ideas for link building. For more information on this research, read how to brainstorm link building ideas with Majestic.