What a link is worthWhat 4,447 audited links show
Every bklink audit checks each link a customer placed on a publication: whether it is still on the page, followed or nofollow, in the article or tucked in a footer, and whether the article also ran elsewhere. These are those checks, every account's together: 4,447 links on 3,001 publications, 14,912 checks, first audits and re-checks together. No customer, campaign or account is named. Links a backlink scan found are checked too, and counted on their own: nobody placed them, so they say nothing about how a publisher treats a link.
How the links behaved
The same measures the Top lists rank publications by, added up across every audited link.
| Measure | Figure | Over |
|---|---|---|
| Followed | 30% | of 3,282 links a check could read |
| Still in place | 80% | of 3,282 links a check could read |
| Kept over time | 95% | of 1,231 links checked again 14 or more days later |
| In the article | 97% | of 1,909 links read in full |
| Editorial | 3% | averaged over 1,909 links read in full |
| Original | 11% | of 4,447 placements |
| Outside links | 8 | median, over 1,909 pages |
| Article length | 856 | median words, over 1,909 pages |
How long links last
Of the links on the page at their first check and checked again later, how many were still there at the latest check, by how long after. A link on a page that no longer answers counts as gone.
| Checked again after | Links | Still there |
|---|---|---|
| 14–29 days | 1 | 100% |
| 30–59 days | 1,131 | 95% |
| 60–89 days | 99 | 99% |
What kind of link
How each link read in full was judged — the four link types BV prices — as the probability of each, added up over 1,909 links.
A 2%B 2%C 47%D 50%
| Type | Share | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| A | 2% | An editorial citation: the site linked because it is useful to its readers. |
| B | 2% | A guest post, sponsored post or paid listing. |
| C | 47% | A press release, syndicated copy, profile, forum post or listing. |
| D | 50% | A link from a site on one owner's network. |
The most audited publications
Links a backlink scan found
Some audits start from a backlink scan of the customer's own site: every page found linking to it, placed or not. Those links are checked the same way, but most are mentions nobody arranged — a directory's "similar products" box, a list that changes every week — so they are kept out of every figure above and out of each publication's record.
What audited backlinks reveal about link quality
Backlink audit findings: what do audited backlinks reveal across thousands of links? A study of placed links
Across 4,447 placed links on 3,001 publications and 14,912 checks, bklink's audits found 30% of the links a check could read followed, 80% still in place, and 95% of those checked again kept over time. It is a study of links customers placed, read on the page itself, not of every link a crawler finds.
Is this an Ahrefs study of audited backlinks? Quality, spam links, patterns and anchor text distribution
No: these figures are bklink's own audits, and nothing here is drawn from an Ahrefs study. Ahrefs counts links in its own crawl index; a bklink audit loads each page a link was placed on and reads the link there. The audits do not measure anchor text distribution. The spam pattern they price is the link network: judged by link type, 50% of the 1,909 links read in full weigh as level D, a site on one owner's network.
Moz Link Explorer and a backlink audit study: the quality of backlinks across thousands of links
Moz Link Explorer reports links from Moz's own index, and this page is not a Moz study either. What an audit adds is what an index count cannot show: 97% of the links read in full sit in the article's text, and 11% of the placements ran on no other site. A median placed page carries 8 links to other sites and 856 words.
Audited backlinks: a link quality study of thousands of links
Link quality here is measured, not scored: whether each link is followed, still on the page, kept between checks, in the article, and on an original article. Of the links a check could read, 30% pass credit to the site they point to, and 80% were neither removed nor on a dead page.
A study of thousands of links from "backlink audit" checks, and their quality
The data is every bklink audit, all accounts together, and no customer, campaign or account is named: 14,912 checks over 4,447 links, first audits and re-checks together. Links a backlink scan found are checked the same way but counted apart, since nobody placed them.
What audited backlinks reveal about link quality across thousands of links
Few placed links are editorial: judged by link type, an average of 3% of the 1,909 links read in full are editorial citations or guest posts (levels A or B). Once live, most stay: 95% of the links checked again 14 or more days after their first check were still there.
Limitations: what this page does not show
- These are the links bklink customers placed and chose to audit, every account together — not a random sample of the web or of any one publication.
- A link is judged as each check found it. A link removed and put back between two checks is not seen.
- The link types are Jev's reading of each page: a model's judgement, not the publisher's own label.
- A followed link is not necessarily a link search engines value; these figures do not measure rankings or traffic.