# DataForSEO Backlinks Is Now a Connected Data Source Connect DataForSEO to AI Data Stream and ask your AI about your backlink profile — referring domains, anchor text, spam scores, and broken links. Bring your own API key and control the cost. Search Console tells you which of your pages Google has indexed and which queries you rank for. What it doesn't tell you is who links to you — and that link graph is one of the biggest levers in SEO. Until now, answering "who's linking to us, and are those links any good?" meant opening a separate backlink tool, exporting a spreadsheet, and reading it yourself. Now you can just ask. **DataForSEO Backlinks is now available as a connected data source.** ## What This Means for You When you connect DataForSEO, your AI gains an independent, external view of your backlink profile — pulled live from DataForSEO's web-wide link index (similar in concept to Ahrefs or Majestic). The real value shows up when you combine it with the Google data you've already connected. ### See Your Full Backlink Profile Ask "what does our backlink profile look like?" and the AI returns the numbers that matter: total backlinks, referring domains, referring IPs, dofollow vs nofollow split, and an overall spam score — for a whole domain or a single URL. ### Spot Toxic and Broken Links A profile full of high-spam-score domains can drag you down, and backlinks pointing at dead or redirected pages leak link equity you've already earned. The AI can surface both — "which referring domains have the highest spam scores?" or "how many of our backlinks are broken?" — so you know what to disavow or reclaim. ### Understand Your Anchor Text Mix Over-optimised, exact-match anchor text is a classic red flag. Ask the AI to break down the anchor texts pointing at your site and it will show you the distribution, so you can spot unnatural patterns before they become a problem. ### An Independent View, Alongside Search Console This is external crawler data, not Google's — so it's a genuinely separate perspective. Pair it with Search Console and Analytics and the AI can reason across all three: what Google sees, what the wider web links to, and how it all tracks against your traffic. ## What Data the AI Can Access When you connect DataForSEO, four tools become available: - **Backlink summary** — the overall profile for a domain or URL: total backlinks, referring domains, spam score, rank, and dofollow/nofollow split - **Backlinks list** — individual backlinks with source page, anchor text, dofollow status, spam score, and first/last seen dates - **Referring domains** — the domains linking to you, ranked by backlink count, each with its own rank and spam score - **Anchors** — the anchor text distribution across your entire backlink profile All access is **read-only** — these tools only ever read from DataForSEO's index. ## You Control the Cost DataForSEO is a **bring-your-own-key** integration: you connect it with your own DataForSEO API credentials, and requests are billed to your own DataForSEO account — not bundled into your AI Data Stream plan. That means you stay in control. When you connect, you set a **maximum rows per request** ceiling, so no single query can run up more than you've allowed — regardless of what you ask the AI to pull. Start conservative and raise it only when you need deeper data. ## How to Connect Create a DataForSEO account, then open the **API Access** tab in your DataForSEO dashboard to find your API login and password (the password is auto-generated and separate from your account password). In AI Data Stream, go to your property's **Connections** page, click Add Connection, choose **DataForSEO**, and paste in your login and password. Set your row limit, hit Test, and you're connected. Full instructions are in our [Connecting Data Sources](/docs/connecting-data-sources/) documentation. ## Availability DataForSEO Backlinks is available now — add it from your property's Connections page. Because it's bring-your-own-key, you're always in control of usage and spend. ## Example Questions to Try Once connected, try asking your AI: ``` What does our backlink profile look like? Which referring domains have the highest spam scores? How many of our backlinks are broken, and where do they point? Break down the anchor text used in links to our homepage. Which domains link to us the most? How does our referring-domain count compare to our organic traffic trend? ``` The AI works best when you combine DataForSEO with your other connections. A question like "are our backlink problems affecting rankings?" pulls from DataForSEO and Search Console together to give you an answer with full context. ## Get Started Head to your property's **Connections** page and add DataForSEO. If you have questions, check the [full documentation](/docs/connecting-data-sources/) or [contact us](/contact/).