How to Find Low Quality Links with Ahrefs

Ahrefs remains the most practical tool for identifying toxic, spammy, or otherwise low quality links pointing at your domain. It’s not perfect – no tool is – but when you know what to look for and how to interpret the data, it gives you enough signal to makne sound decisions. This guide walks through the full process the way I actually do it, not the sanitized version you find in generic tutorials.

What Counts as a Low Quality Link?

Before touching Ahrefs, you need a working definition. A low quality link is not simply a link from a low Domain Rating site. That framing oversimplifies things and leads to unnecessary disavow files that can actually hurt you.

In practice, I define a low quality link as one that meets one or more of these criteria:

• The linking page exists solely to host links with no genuine content purpose
• The linking domain is part of an obvious link network (similar footprint, identical ownership, cross-linking patterns)
• The anchor text is over-optimized with exact-match commercial keywords at scale
• The linking site has zero organic traffic and no discernible real audience
• The link was placed on a page with hundreds of other outbound links to unrelated sites
• The linking domain has a history of spam, hacking, or malware distribution
• The link comes from a site in a completely unrelated language or geographic context with no logical reason to link to you

Any single one of these factors deserves scrutiny. Multiple factors on the same link? That’s a strong signal to act.

Setting Up Your Ahrefs Backlink Audit Correctly

Log into Ahrefs and navigate to Site Explorer. Enter your domain – use the root domain format unless you’re auditing a specific subfolder or subdomain. Under the left navigation, go to Backlinks first to get a raw view, then shift to Referring Domains for the higher-level analysis.

One mistake I see constantly is people filtering too aggressively before they’ve seen the full picture. Start with no filters. Let the data breathe. You’ll calibrate your filters once you understand what the profile actually looks like.

Key Ahrefs Metrics to Focus On

Step-by-Step: How to Find Low Quality Links with Ahrefs

Step 1 – Export Your Full Backlink Profile

In Site Explorer, go to Referring Domains and export the full list. Depending on your site size, this could be hundreds or tens of thousands of rows. Do the same for Backlinks to get the page-level data. You need both because a domain might look clean at the top level but have specific pages that are clearly spam.

Ahrefs allows exports in CSV format. Import this into Google Sheets or Excel. Add a column for your manual assessment – you’ll use this as a working document throughout the audit.

Step 2 – Filter by Zero Organic Traffic

Back in Ahrefs, use the Organic Traffic filter on the Referring Domains report. Set it to show domains with 0 monthly organic visits. This single filter eliminates a massive portion of your list and surfaces the most suspicious domains immediately.

The logic is simple: a real website with a real audience gets at least some organic traffic. A site with zero organic traffic that’s linking to you is either newly launched, entirely de-indexed, or built for the purpose of distributing links. None of those scenarios are ones you want to be associated with.

Step 3 – Identify Over-Optimized Anchor Text Patterns

In the left sidebar, click Anchors. This gives you a breakdown of all anchor text variations pointing to your site. What you’re looking for is an unnatural concentration of exact-match commercial anchors – phrases like “buy cheap widgets” or “best SEO services” appearing dozens of times from different domains.

Natural link profiles have a high proportion of branded anchors, URL anchors, and generic anchors like “click here” or “learn more.” When exact-match commercial phrases dominate, especially from domains with no traffic, that’s a manipulation signal Google’s algorithms are trained to detect.

Cross-reference the anchor text report with the referring domains report. Identify which specific domains are sending those over-optimized anchors – those are your priority targets.

Step 4 – Use the “Best by Links” Filter to Find Suspicious Link Patterns

Within the referring domains, click into individual suspicious domains directly in Ahrefs. Look at what else they link to. If a domain is linking to 50 different commercial sites across completely unrelated industries with exact-match anchors, that’s a clear network footprint.

This manual verification step takes time, but it’s the only way to separate genuinely low quality links from simply low-authority links. The difference matters enormously when deciding whether to disavow.

Step 5 – Check the Link Type (Dofollow vs. Nofollow)

Filter your backlink report to show only dofollow links. Nofollow links from spammy sites are far less concerning because they’re not meant to pass PageRank. Your audit should prioritize dofollow links from low quality sources above all else.

That said, don’t completely ignore nofollow links from malicious domains. If a site is involved in malware distribution or actively adversarial SEO, even a nofollow association isn’t one I’d want sitting in a backlink profile I was managing.

Step 6 – Look for Sitewide Links from Suspicious Domains

In the Backlinks report, sort by the number of links from each domain. If a single domain is sending 500 links to your site – and it’s not a legitimate partner or internal platform – that’s a sitewide link, often placed in a footer or sidebar template. These carry significant weight in spam assessments.

A sitewide link from a high-quality site like a major publication or trusted partner platform is perfectly normal. A sitewide link from a zero-traffic, DR 3 blog with no discernible real audience is a problem.

Step 7 – Check the Referring Page’s Content Directly

This is a step most automated reports skip entirely, but it’s where I find the most clear-cut toxic links. Visit the actual linking page. Ask yourself:

• Is there any real content on this page, or is it just a collection of links?
• Does the content make any topical sense in relation to your site?
• Is the page clearly machine-generated or scraped?
• Are there any trust signals – contact page, real about page, identifiable ownership?

If a page fails most of these checks, you have what you need to make a confident disavow decision.

Step 8 – Use Ahrefs’ Link Intersect Tool to Benchmark Against Competitors

Go to Link Intersect under Competitive Analysis. Enter your domain and two or three competitors. This shows you which domains link to your competitors but not to you – useful for outreach – but it also gives you context. If a suspicious domain in your profile links to none of your competitors, that’s further evidence it’s not a natural editorial link.

How to Assess Link Quality Beyond Ahrefs Metrics

Ahrefs metrics are proxies, not ground truth. DR, traffic estimates, and link counts are useful signals but they can be manipulated or misread. Here’s how I sanity-check links that Ahrefs alone can’t fully characterize:

Check Domain History with the Wayback Machine

Some domains look clean in Ahrefs because they’re relatively new or recently acquired. A domain that used to be a pharma spam site and was later repurposed as a “digital marketing blog” is still a liability. The Wayback Machine (web.archive.org) shows you what a domain used to be. If a domain’s history is clearly spam-related, the link is suspect regardless of its current DR.

Look for Footprint Signals

Private blog networks and link farms often share hosting, WHOIS data, theme templates, or internal link structures. Tools like SpyFu and SEMrush can supplement Ahrefs here. But even without additional tools, you can spot patterns manually – identical WordPress themes, similar URL structures, cross-links between the same cluster of sites, and no real social presence are all footprint indicators.

Evaluate the Linking Page’s Topical Relevance

A link from a completely unrelated industry isn’t automatically bad, but it’s a question worth asking. If you run an e-commerce pet supply store and 40 links are coming from sites about financial advice, insurance, or gambling – and those sites show other red flags – the irrelevance compounds the risk.

Common Mistakes When Auditing Backlinks in Ahrefs

These are the errors I see most often when reviewing backlink audit work done by others:

• Disavowing based on DR alone. Low DR does not equal low quality. A new blog run by a genuine expert might have DR 5 with zero spam signals. Disavowing it is actively harmful.
• Ignoring the anchor text distribution entirely. Anchor text manipulation is one of the strongest Penguin-era signals. It’s still relevant.
• Only looking at the top-level domain rather than the specific linking pages. A legitimate domain might have one garbage page that’s part of a paid link scheme.
• Creating an overly aggressive disavow file. Disavowing good links because you were overly cautious can reduce your domain’s authority. When in doubt about a borderline link, do nothing.
• Not verifying that removed or disavowed links actually process. Submit your disavow file through Google Search Console and monitor for confirmation. Ahrefs won’t tell you this – you have to check independently.

How Often Should You Audit Your Backlinks?

For most sites, a thorough backlink audit once every six months is sufficient. If you’re in a competitive, link-heavy niche – finance, legal, health, gambling, or aggressive e-commerce – I’d shorten that to quarterly. For any site actively building links, checking new referring domains monthly using Ahrefs’ New Backlinks report is a reasonable baseline practice.

Set up Ahrefs alerts for new backlinks. This way you catch suspicious link building campaigns – whether someone is targeting you with negative SEO or a past link vendor is suddenly over-delivering – before they accumulate into a serious problem.

What Ahrefs Can and Cannot Tell You

Ahrefs crawls the web independently and its index doesn’t perfectly match Google’s. Some links that Ahrefs shows as active may already be ignored by Google. Some links Google is aware of may not appear in Ahrefs yet. This gap matters.

The practical implication is that Ahrefs is your best available approximation, not a perfect map of your Google-visible backlink profile. Use Google Search Console’s Links report alongside Ahrefs to cross-reference. If a suspicious domain appears in both, it deserves priority attention. If it’s only in Ahrefs, it’s still worth addressing but with slightly less urgency.

“The biggest mistake in backlink auditing isn’t missing a toxic link – it’s disavowing a good one because you relied exclusively on a single metric like Domain Rating and skipped the manual verification step.”

Expert Tips for More Efficient Ahrefs Backlink Audits

• Use the Broken Backlinks report to identify links pointing to pages that no longer exist. These aren’t necessarily low quality, but they represent link equity leakage worth recapturing through redirects.
• The Link Growth chart in Ahrefs shows you spikes in new referring domains. An unnatural spike – especially one you didn’t create – often signals negative SEO or an aggressive past campaign catching up.
• Use batch analysis in Ahrefs to paste a list of suspicious domains and get their metrics all at once. This is dramatically faster than checking each individually.
• Sort the referring domains report by Linked Domains in descending order. Domains that link out to an enormous number of other sites are almost always link directories or spam networks.
• Filter for links with the rel=”sponsored” or rel=”ugc” attribute – these indicate paid or user-generated content signals. They’re not necessarily toxic but they tell you something about the context of the link.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I find toxic backlinks in Ahrefs specifically?

In Ahrefs Site Explorer, go to the Referring Domains report and filter for domains with zero organic traffic. Cross-reference this with the Anchors report to identify over-optimized exact-match anchor text from those same domains. Then manually visit the linking pages to confirm the spam signals. Domains with no real content, no discernible audience, and aggressive anchor text pointing to commercial pages are your highest-priority toxic links.

Does a low Domain Rating automatically mean a link is low quality?

No. Domain Rating reflects a domain’s link profile strength, not its quality or legitimacy. A small industry blog, a new publication, or a niche community site might have a very low DR while being a completely legitimate and contextually relevant source of links. Evaluate DR alongside organic traffic, content quality, anchor text, and the actual linking page before making any decisions.

Should I disavow all low quality links I find in Ahrefs?

Not necessarily. Disavow only links where you have clear evidence of spam signals – zero traffic, over-optimized anchors, machine-generated content, or obvious link network footprints. For borderline cases, doing nothing is often safer than aggressive disavowing. An overly large disavow file can inadvertently remove links that contribute positive signals, and Google tends to treat links it can’t evaluate neutrally rather than punitively in most cases.

How do I find negative SEO attacks using Ahrefs?

Use the New Backlinks report and set the date range to the past 30 days. Sort by referring domain to see if a sudden cluster of low quality domains has started linking to you. Look for patterns – similar domain names, identical anchor text, links from foreign-language spam sites. If you see a coordinated spike with clear spam characteristics, that’s a likely negative SEO campaign. Disavow at the domain level immediately and document the event.

What’s the difference between a low quality link and a spammy link?

A low quality link is a broader category that includes links from sites with thin content, no audience, or irrelevant context – links that add no value but may not actively harm you. A spammy link is a subset with deliberate manipulation intent, such as links from known PBNs, comment spam, forum profile spam, or paid links on content farms. All spammy links are low quality, but not all low quality links are spammy. Spammy links warrant immediate disavow action; low quality borderline links require more careful assessment.