Linkwake
linkwake.com
What it is
Linkwake tracks changes in referring domains across agency client portfolios. It compares Common Crawl releases to show domains gained, lost or retained, and identifies domains linking to competitors but not to a tracked site as possible outreach gaps. Users can organize domains into portfolios, follow movement on dashboards, and receive scheduled weekly or monthly CSVs or shareable client report links. Its source is Common Crawl’s web graph, which Linkwake says covers more than 100 million domains; data changes when releases arrive, roughly every 2–3 months. The focus is domain-level links, not keywords, page-level links or anchor text. The free plan costs nothing and includes five tracked domains, release-change comparisons, email digests and manual reports. Paid plans start at $24/mo. Starter lists 100 domains and three releases of history; higher plans offer more tracked domains, longer history, reports and API access. Common Crawl is not a complete web index, so missing relationships should be checked before outreach.
Spec sheet
- What it does
- Linkwake monitors referring-domain backlink changes across agency client portfolios.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Purpose
- Linkwake monitors referring-domain backlink movement across client portfolios for agencies.Read 4 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- API
- Full API access is included in the Agency plan.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Maker
- The product is built and operated independently by Derek Isensee.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Account rights
- Users may request data export or permanent deletion by email, with responses promised within 30 days.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Agency audience
- Linkwake is described as an independent backlink-monitoring product built and operated by Derek Isensee to help agencies manage multiple clients.Read 4 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- API evidence
- A Linkwake research article says its published study figures were obtained through the live Linkwake API backed by ClickHouse.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Common Crawl access
- Common Crawl states that access to its AWS-hosted corpus is free and that users may analyze or download it.Read 14 Oct 2026 · commoncrawl.org
- Common Crawl foundation
- Common Crawl describes itself as a nonprofit founded in 2007 that maintains a free, open repository of web-crawl data.Read 14 Oct 2026 · commoncrawl.org
- Common Crawl graph structure
- Common Crawl publishes host and domain graphs, aggregates domains at the pay-level-domain level, and includes technical links such as scripts and fonts.Read 14 Oct 2026 · commoncrawl.org
- Common Crawl licensing
- Common Crawl grants a limited, non-exclusive license to use its service subject to its terms and warns that crawled content can have separate rights.Read 14 Oct 2026 · commoncrawl.org
- Common Crawl scale
- Common Crawl says its corpus contains petabytes of data collected regularly since 2008.Read 14 Oct 2026 · commoncrawl.org
- Competitor gaps
- Users can find domains that link to competitors but not to a tracked domain.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Competitor research
- It shows sites linking to competitors but not to the tracked domain, as potential outreach gaps.Read 4 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Coverage caveat
- Linkwake states that Common Crawl is not a complete web index and that missing domain relationships should be verified before outreach.Read 4 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Coverage limitation
- Linkwake states that Common Crawl is a sample rather than a complete web index and that missing relationships require live verification.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- CSV import
- Client domains can be pasted in a list or uploaded from CSV files.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Data rights
- Users may email Linkwake to export or permanently delete their data, with responses promised within 30 days.Read 4 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Data source
- Linkwake builds its measurements from Common Crawl's open web graph covering more than 100 million domains.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Hosting
- Application data is hosted on Fly.io in the United States, with the web app served through Cloudflare.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Methodology
- The system normalizes hosts to registrable domains and counts each source domain once per target within a release.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Notable news
- Linkwake published its Common Crawl study of 4.34 billion referring-domain relationships on July 9, 2026.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Notable research
- A July 6, 2026 Linkwake study reported 216,708 new and 202,742 lost referring domains for GitHub between two releases.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Operational limitation
- Portfolio monitoring is intended for release-level strategy and is not minute-by-minute uptime or link-change alerting.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Page-level enrichment
- For selected relationships, Linkwake can retrieve archived HTML and record source URL, target URL, anchor, link type, and rel attributes.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Payment security
- Card numbers are handled directly by Stripe and are not stored by Linkwake.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Portfolio dashboards
- Domains can be grouped by client portfolios for cross-site movement views.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Privacy and billing
- The privacy policy says payment details go directly to Stripe and Linkwake does not store card numbers.Read 4 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Privacy data
- The service collects account email, salted password hash, billing details, tracked domains and competitors, and security logs.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Release comparisons
- It identifies referring domains gained, lost, and kept across Common Crawl releases.Read 4 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Release diffs
- The service compares Common Crawl releases to classify referring domains as new, lost, or persistent.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Reports
- The service offers scheduled weekly or monthly CSVs and shareable client report links.Read 4 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Research downloads
- Linkwake research articles publish derived CSV datasets and calculation explanations rather than republishing the raw crawl corpus.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Scheduled reports
- Weekly or monthly CSV reports and shareable client links can be scheduled.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Scope limit
- The product intentionally excludes keyword metrics, page-level backlink reporting, and anchor-text reporting from its core workflow.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Terms and billing
- Paid subscriptions are billed through Stripe monthly, and users can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel from the billing page.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Terms limitation
- Linkwake disclaims completeness and accuracy for its periodic Common Crawl-derived backlink data.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
- Update cadence
- Backlink measurements refresh when a new Common Crawl graph release is processed, generally every two to three months.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkwake.com
Plans and prices
Strong points and limits
Strong points
- Groups domains into client portfolios.
- Shows gained, lost and retained referring domains.
- Offers scheduled CSVs and shareable client reports.
- Free plan includes five tracked domains.
Limits
- Backlink data updates roughly every 2–3 months.
- No keyword, page-level or anchor-text data.
- Common Crawl is not a complete web index.
Who it suits
Linkwake is aimed at agencies tracking backlinks across multiple client domains. It may suit teams focused on domain-level referring links and competitor overlap rather than keywords, pages or anchor text.
Verdict
Linkwake provides portfolio-oriented backlink monitoring with competitor gap discovery and client reporting. Its release cadence and domain-level scope are important limits to weigh before relying on it for outreach.
Where Specifiction places it
- Backlink Analysis Tools#3 of 298.8