What is Referring Domain?

A referring domain is a distinct external website that links to yours — counted once per domain, no matter how many individual pages on that site contain a link. Ten different articles on the same news site linking to you count as one referring domain with ten backlinks, not ten referring domains.

This distinction matters because referring-domain count is generally a stronger authority signal than raw backlink count. A hundred backlinks from a hundred different domains typically carries far more weight than a hundred backlinks from a single domain, since the former represents a hundred independent sites choosing to link to you.

Referring domains detected from real traffic carry data a link index alone can't: sessions driven, first-seen date, and the exact landing page visitors arrive on. Subdomains are treated as distinct domains (blog.example.com is not the same referring domain as news.example.com), and search engines, social networks, AI assistants, and your own domain are excluded automatically so the list reflects genuine third-party links.