Documentation

How to use the Competitor Backlink Gap

Gap analysis compares the domains linking to you against those linking to your competitors and surfaces the ones linking to them but not you — ranked by how many rivals share the link and by authority, with spammy sources filtered out.

Start FreeOpen the dashboard

Want the overview first? See the Competitor Backlink Gap feature page

Where to find it

Dashboard → Overview (the Competitor gap panel) and Dashboard → Competitors (the competitor overview and gap tables).

Step by step

  1. 1

    Open the competitor gap panel

    On the Overview page, find the Competitor gap section. Enter your domain in the first field.

  2. 2

    Add up to three competitors

    Type a competitor domain into each field. Use the Add button to include up to three, or the remove control to drop one. Pick real rivals that rank for your target keywords.

  3. 3

    Run the analysis

    Click Run. BacklinkGoals pulls the top linking domains for you and each competitor from live Moz data, computes the set difference, and lists the opportunities you're missing.

  4. 4

    Work the opportunity list

    Results are ranked by how many competitors each source links to (an 'everyone-but-you' link is high value) and by authority. The summary shows total opportunities, how many are shared by all competitors, and average authority. Pursue the relevant, editorial ones.

Tips & guardrails

  • Relevance beats volume — only chase links from sites that genuinely fit your niche.
  • Sources with a high spam score are filtered out automatically; don't try to reintroduce them.
  • The comparison samples the top linking domains per site, so treat it as a representative gap, not an exhaustive crawl.

Try it free — Backlink Gap Checker

Run a quick gap comparison against up to three competitors with no login — same live Moz data.

FAQ

Competitor Backlink Gap — questions

Up to three competitor domains per run, both in the dashboard and in the free gap checker.

Live Moz data (linking root domains) when a Moz API key is configured on the server. Without it, gap analysis returns a 'not supported' message.

Keep reading

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