Backlink Monitor – Track New & Lost Backlinks

See the new and lost backlinks of any site, in the period you choose. Run it once to review a competitor, or schedule it weekly and get your own backlink alerts.

Why it is different: link databases are often wrong about lost links. In our own test, 25 of 87 links reported as "lost" were still on the page. This Actor opens each linking page and checks the link itself. Links the live page contradicts are removed, and you only pay for links confirmed on the page.

Built for SEO agencies reporting to clients, site owners who want to know when a valuable link disappears, and link builders watching where competitors get new links.

What you get

• New links found in the period.
• Lost links that disappeared in the period, so you can ask to get them back.
• One row per linking website, strongest first, with the linking page, the page linked to and the anchor text.
• Dofollow or nofollow, link type, strength of the linking website and page (0-1000), spam score, first and last seen.
• verified: true when the live page confirms it. false when we could not tell, for example because the page blocks automated visits or is built by JavaScript. Those rows are listed for free.
• One free summary row per site with the totals.

Example output row

A real row:

{
  "row_type": "link",
  "target": "notion.so",
  "change": "new",
  "domain_from": "app.yoroll.ai",
  "url_from": "https://app.yoroll.ai/",
  "url_to": "https://www.notion.so/Yoroll-Creating-Interactive-Movie-Games-308d2df44910807d88a7ca111d6ed046",
  "anchor": "Quick tutorial",
  "dofollow": true,
  "domain_from_rank": 488,
  "first_seen": "2026-11-07T10:29:50+00:00",
  "verified": true,
  "period_days": 30
}

Backlink alerts on a schedule

1. Enter your website and set Look back (days) to 7.
2. Save it as a task and add a weekly schedule in Apify.
3. Connect the run to email, Slack or a webhook with Apify's integrations.

One site checked weekly with a few changes costs about $0.40 a month.

An alternative to link alerts in Ahrefs and Semrush

Those tools put backlink alerts inside monthly plans. This Actor gives you only the changes, as a list you can keep, and you pay per run. The link index is DataForSEO's own, so its counts differ from Ahrefs' and Semrush's numbers. There is no dashboard or outreach workflow.

Input

Field	What it does
targets	Domains (whole site with subdomains) or page URLs. Your own or a competitor's. Up to 1,000.
days	How far back to look. 1 to 365, default 30.
show	both (default), new or lost.
maxLinks	Per site, for new and for lost separately. 1 to 5,000, default 100.
dofollowOnly	Leave out nofollow links.

Pricing

Pay per event, no subscription:

• $2 per 1,000 links ($0.002 per link confirmed on the live page). Links we could not confirm are free.
• $0.04 per lookup. New and lost are one lookup each per site, also when nothing changed, because the data provider bills every lookup. Each further 1,000 links is one more lookup.
• $0.001 per run start.

Examples: one site with 20 new and 5 lost links costs about $0.13. Only lost links for 10 sites, 5 each, cost about $0.50.

Try it for $0.001: the pre-filled example is answered from a saved snapshot of a real lookup (rows carry from_snapshot: true). You can cap the cost of a run with the maximum charge setting; the Actor never charges beyond it. Lines that are not a domain or URL are listed and never charged.

Free Apify plan: the pre-filled example works on any plan. Live lookups need a paid Apify plan (any plan), because each one costs real money at the data provider.

Good to know

• One row per linking website, so a site that adds ten links shows once. A lost link means that link is gone; the website may still link to you from another page.
• "New" means first seen by the link index in the period, which can be later than the day the link was added.
• The live check reads the page's HTML. A link added only by JavaScript is not visible there, so a page with other normal links can still show it as lost, or remove it as a new link.
• Internal links of the site itself are left out.
• Because the live check can remove links, you may get fewer rows than maxLinks. new_links_total and lost_links_total show the index totals before the check.

More tools from Rowfeed

• Backlinks Checker – every backlink of a site right now, with anchors and link strength.
• Competitor Keyword Research – the keywords any website ranks for, and your keyword gap.
• Domain Authority Checker – authority scores for many domains at once.
• Broken Link Checker – 404s, dead links and broken images on any website.
• Keyword Research Tool – search volume, CPC, difficulty and keyword ideas.
• Website Email Extractor & Contact Finder – public company emails, to ask for a lost link back.
• Google Sheets Export – send the results of any run to a Google Sheet.