Backlink Analysis: side-by-side comparison of SEO multi-tools

In our study we didn't include services that focus only on backlinks, we were interested mainly in comparing multi-tools. Backlink Watch, Majestic, Link-Assist and other tools that serve just the purpose of checking backlinks are usually a better option if that's the only task you plan to accomplish, but we want to find the best tool that can do more than just one thing.

Color-coding was used to highlight the results:

• Dark green — best result (most data);
  
• Light green — 2nd place;
  
• Red – worst result;
  
• White – no data.
  We used yellow to fill in the rest of the cells.

We used free trial versions of the products to get the data. Unfortunately, Searchmetrics doesn't show the number of referring domains in free trial. We still decided to keep it in our research as it was showing number of backlinks.

We decided to give scores based on the number of results taking a leader for each domain as a benchmark. If 1st place shows 400 backlinks, second shows 300 backlinks and third shows 200 backlinks and we set the score of the first place to 100% – 2nd and 3rd will receive a score of 75% and 50% respectively. This allowed us to measure the efficiency more accurately, as some tools may fall behind just by a couple of backlinks, so instead of losing by points they will just fall behind by 1%.

Results:

Based on the number of results or, in other words, size of the database we have the following results:

1st — Ahrefs (1317);
2nd — Serpstat (1052);
3rd — SEMrush (251)
4th — Searchmetrics* (142);
5th — MOZ (102).

Searchmetrics' results were calculated without the number of referring domains, this result can roughly be doubled, which would put Searchmetrics into the 3rd place.

Check out our vlog episode to learn how to use Serpstat's backlink analysis tool: