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798.5 billion backlinks indexed

Backlink data for AI search: what it can show

People keep asking how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews choose which pages to cite. We index 798.5 billion backlinks, so we can test a few of the guesses.

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  • Free DR lookup, no key needed
  • Link counts for the domains AI tools cite
  • Experiments written down so you can repeat them
GET /api.php?action=domainJSON

$ curl "https://algolink.net/api.php?action=overview&q=nytimes.com&key=sk_live_..."

Who it is for

What backlink data can tell you about AI citations

Backlink data is a record of who links to whom, and AI answer engines do not publish how they choose sources. Those two facts only meet in the middle, where a cited page usually also has links pointing at it.

That overlap is all we have. We have not seen a published test that proves links cause citations; we have seen plenty of cited domains with large link profiles, which is a weaker claim and an easy one to over-read.

So we treat the topic as a lab notebook. Pull the domains an assistant names, count their referring domains, and compare them with the domains it ignored. Doing it takes an afternoon.

Our own crawler and our own link index supply the numbers, refreshed about once a month, so a link from last week may be missing. Start with the AI Overviews source table to see which claims are solid and which are guesses.

Timeline

Dated changes people keep asking about

  1. Bard opens to the public

    Google starts letting people in a waitlist. It later renames the product Gemini, on 8 February 2024.

  2. AI Overviews reach US searchers

    Announced at Google I/O, after a year as the SGE experiment. Early odd answers made headlines within days.

  3. ChatGPT search launches

    OpenAI adds web results with links to sources inside ChatGPT, first for paying users and then for more people.

  4. Google announces AI Mode

    A Labs test of a full conversational results page, widened in the US from May 2025.

What it is for

Four jobs for link counts in this research

None of these prove a mechanism. Each one gives you a number you can argue about.

  • Size up the cited domains

    Run bulk DR on every domain an assistant names for one prompt set. One credit covers up to 2,000 domains.

  • Find who shares the neighbourhood

    Intersect two or three cited domains and see which sites link to all of them. Useful for outreach, weak as proof.

  • Read the anchors

    Anchor text shows how others describe a brand. Assistants seem to echo descriptions, though that is a hypothesis.

  • Repeat monthly

    A single snapshot lies. Compare the same prompts and domains after each index refresh to see what actually moved.

domains in our link graph
181,132,097
domain-to-domain links
2.77 billion
per credit
$0.0001
free credit on sign-up
$100

FAQ

Questions we hear from people studying AI search

Is backlink data useful for AI search research?

Partly. It describes a page's footprint on the open web, and cited pages often have one. It cannot show how a model weighs sources, so use it to build comparisons and hypotheses rather than to explain a single answer.

Do links decide what ChatGPT cites?

Nobody outside OpenAI can say. ChatGPT search leans on web results and shows sources, so being indexed and findable matters. Links might feed that indirectly. Treat anyone selling a precise formula with suspicion, and test your own prompts.

How do I check if my page was cited in an AI Overview?

Search the query yourself, open the overview, and note the linked sources. Repeat from a clean browser and a second location, since answers vary. Log the date, then compare monthly. Search Console does not break out overview citations as a separate report.

What is the difference between AEO and GEO?

Answer engine optimisation targets being the quoted answer. Generative engine optimisation targets being named inside a model-written response. In practice the tactics overlap heavily. Our glossary lists both with the other terms people mix up.

Does schema markup change AI visibility?

No evidence says it does by itself. Schema helps search engines parse a page, and Google says its AI features follow normal search guidance. Several people report no change after adding it. See the myth check for what we would test.

How fresh is your link data?

About one month. We refresh the index roughly monthly, so a link added last week may not be listed yet. For daily crawl or rank tracking, Ahrefs or Semrush are the fuller products.

Can I try this without paying?

Yes. The domain, overview, stats and suggest actions need no key, and sign-up with a Google account gives $100 of credit with no card. Paid calls start at one credit, which is $0.0001.