Backlink Audit With Claude: Keep, Fix or Ignore Each Link

Say you run a small online store for baking supplies, and traffic slid 20% over the summer. Someone on a forum says it is “toxic backlinks”. Google Search Console’s free Links report lists 164 sites linking to you, and you recognize maybe ten of them.

That is when people go looking for a backlink audit, a check of every site that links to yours to decide which links help, which you have lost, and which you should act on. Most audits end the same way, with a scary “toxic” number and a file of domains to disavow. On a small site that is usually the wrong ending.

This guide runs the audit inside Claude, using the tool we build, ContextBolt SEO, for the link data. It starts with what Google already tells you for free. Then it spends its effort on the links you can win back and the strong ones you are losing. The junk mostly stays where it is, and the post explains why.

What a backlink audit is for, and what it is not

A backlink is a link from another site to yours. Google still reads one as a vote. A referring domain is one site that links to you, however many links it sends, and it is the number that matters more than raw link count.

An audit answers three questions about your own links. Which ones are doing the work? Which ones have broken or disappeared? And is anything bad enough that Google could penalize you for it?

Here is the opinion this post is built on. For most sites, the third question is the least important and gets the most attention. Several SEO suites sell a “toxic” score and a disavow workflow built on top of it. Google’s own disavow help page says “most sites will not need to use this tool”, because Google can usually work out which links to trust by itself.

That is not a guess about how Google behaves. When it shipped the December 2022 link spam update, Google wrote that it was using its spam system “to neutralize the impact of unnatural links”, in its own announcement. Spam links pointing at you mostly count for nothing. Strong links pointing at a page of yours that no longer exists do you little good either, and those are yours to fix.

Claude is well suited to this job, with one condition. It cannot see backlinks without live data, because the link graph changes every day and a model’s training data is a frozen snapshot. Connected over MCP, the open standard for plugging agents into live tools, it can pull your profile, sort every site and write the fix list. Researching your rivals’ links is a different job, covered in backlink research with Claude.

Step 1: check Search Console before you spend anything

Two free reports come first, both inside Google Search Console.

The Manual actions report. Open Search Console, pick your property, then Security & Manual Actions, then Manual actions. You are looking for one entry, “Unnatural links to your site”. Google’s manual actions page describes it as a pattern of artificial or manipulative links that breaks its spam policies. If the report says no issues were detected, Google has not penalized your links. Keep that in mind for Step 5.

The Links report. Links, then External links, then Top linking sites. Export it. The export is straight from Google and costs nothing. Google’s Links report help is clear about the limits, though. It is a sample, not every link, and tables stop at 1,000 rows. It also shows no link strength, no spam read and nothing about links you have lost.

That is the gap the paid half fills. Search Console tells you who links to you. It does not tell you which of those links are worth anything, or which pages of yours they land on that are now dead.

Step 2: read your profile in one call

Start with the whole picture before any list.

Copy this prompt

Run a backlink overview on doughcraft.example. Tell me my domain
rank, how many sites link to me, how many of those are dofollow,
my spam score, and how many broken backlinks I have. Then tell me
which of those numbers I should worry about.

In ContextBolt SEO that is backlink_overview, three credits. Here is the shape of what comes back. The format is the tool’s own; the store and the numbers are made up for the example.

Backlink profile: doughcraft.example
Domain rank: 212/1000
Backlinks: 3,418 from 164 referring domains
Referring domains: 121 dofollow · 43 nofollow
Spam score: 9/100
Referring pages: 2,960 · referring IPs: 151
Broken backlinks: 37

How to read each line.

• Domain rank: The site’s own authority on a 0 to 1000 scale. Useful for comparing yourself with the sites that rank above you, not as a score to chase.
• Backlinks and referring domains: 3,418 links from 164 sites means a few sites send a lot. A blogroll or a footer link repeats on every page. That is normal and rarely a problem.
• Dofollow and nofollow: Nofollow tells Google not to count the link as a vote, though Google treats it as a hint. A profile that is nearly all nofollow is thin. A healthy one has both.
• Spam score: A 0 to 100 read across all your links, from the data provider. Single digits is ordinary. If it is high, the off-topic sites in Step 3 are the likely cause.
• Broken backlinks: Links that point at a page of yours that returns a 4xx or 5xx error. This is the number to act on, in Step 4.

The numbers are estimates from a large third-party link index, not Google’s own count. No outside tool sees Google’s full link graph, which is why two tools give the same site different totals. For deciding what to fix, estimates are plenty.

Step 3: sort your linking sites into keep, watch and ignore

Now the list.

Copy this prompt

List the referring domains for doughcraft.example, the 100
strongest. Sort them into three groups. Keep: strong, relevant
sites. Watch: strong sites sending only one or two links. Ignore:
weak or off-topic sites. Give me each group as a table, then save
the full list to a file called backlinks-2026-10.md.

That is referring_domains, three credits, up to 100 sites with the strongest link first. Each row carries the link strength, the number of backlinks that site sends you and how many are dofollow. If your Claude app cannot write files, copy the list into a note instead, and paste it back next month.

1. bakingforums.example: link strength 233/1000 · 41 backlinks
   · 41 dofollow
2. sourdoughdaily.example: link strength 190/1000 · 2 backlinks
   · 2 dofollow
3. free-dir-links.example: link strength 4/1000 · 860 backlinks
   · 860 dofollow

Link strength is how much ranking value that one site passes to yours. It is a property of the link, not of the site. A huge publisher linking once from a buried page scores low.

What each group means in practice.

• Keep: Rows like bakingforums. Strong, on topic, many links. Nothing to do except make sure the pages they point at stay live.
• Watch: Rows like sourdoughdaily. A strong site sending two links is one edit away from sending none. These are the links Step 6 checks for next month.
• Ignore: Rows like free-dir-links. A directory sending 860 links at almost no strength looks alarming and does almost nothing. Google’s systems are built to discount exactly this. Leave it.

One limit to know before you trust the Ignore group. The list stops at the 100 strongest sites. A store with 164 referring domains has 64 more that never show up, and the weakest tail is where junk lives. For that tail, use the Search Console export from Step 1. Paste it into the conversation and ask Claude to flag anything off topic.

If one site in the list looks wrong, check it on its own. Run backlink_overview on that domain, three credits, for its own authority and spam score. Two or three of those is plenty. You are checking the odd one, not the whole list.

Step 4: win back the links pointing at dead pages

This is the part of the audit you can act on this week, and almost nobody does it.

The overview said 37 broken backlinks. Each one is a real link, often from a site that chose to link to you, landing on a page of yours that now returns an error. Usually that page was renamed, moved or deleted in a redesign. The link still exists. It just lands on an error page.

The overview gives you the count, not the URLs. Search Console has the URLs, for free.

1. Find the dead pages: In Search Console, open Indexing, then Pages, and look for the row “Not found (404)”. Export it.
2. Find which of those are linked to: In the Links report, open External links, then Top linked pages. Any URL that appears in both lists is a dead page with links pointing at it.
3. Redirect each one: Point it with a permanent 301 redirect at the closest live page. The old cake-tins category goes to the new cake-tins category, not to the homepage.

Copy this prompt

Here are two exports from Search Console: my 404 pages and my top
linked pages. Find every URL in both. For each one, suggest the
closest live page on my site to redirect it to, and write the
redirect rules as a table I can hand to my developer.

That prompt spends no credits. Claude is matching two lists you pasted in. Read every suggested target before anything ships, because a redirect to the wrong page is worse than none. If you would rather see the on-page side of the same redesign mess, a site audit with Claude catches the titles, headings and indexability problems it tends to leave behind.

Step 5: write a disavow file only if Google asked

A disavow file is a text file you upload to Google listing links you want it to ignore. It is the tool every “toxic backlinks” scare points you at.

Google’s disavow page sets a two-part test. You should disavow only if you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial or low-quality links, and they have caused a manual action or likely will. If Step 1 showed no manual action and you never bought links, you do not pass the test, and the file does nothing useful.

If you did get the manual action, Claude makes the file quick to write.

Copy this prompt

I have an "Unnatural links to your site" manual action. From my
Ignore group and my Search Console export, draft a disavow file.
Use domain: lines, one per site, with a # comment above each group
saying why. Do not include any site from my Keep or Watch groups.

Three rules from Google’s page trip people up.

• The format: A .txt file in UTF-8, one entry per line, with domain:example.com to disavow a whole site and # for comments. Up to 100,000 lines and 2MB.
• Uploading replaces the old file: If you have disavowed links before, merge the old file in first, or you will undo it.
• It takes weeks: Google says it can take a few weeks to apply as it recrawls.

Read every line yourself before you upload. Disavowing a good link throws away a vote you earned, and no tool will warn you. Then clean up the links you can, as the manual actions page asks, and file the reconsideration request from the same report.

Step 6: catch lost links next month

A lost link is a site that used to link to you and no longer does. One lost link from a strong site can matter more than every spam link you will ever get, and nothing in Search Console will tell you it happened.

So run the same audit again in a month.

Copy this prompt

Run a backlink overview and the referring domains list, the 100
strongest, for doughcraft.example again. Compare the list against
backlinks-2026-10.md. Which strong sites have dropped off, which
are new, and which Watch sites changed?

The overview opens with a line saying what moved since your last lookup, in referring domains, backlinks and domain rank. Every lookup also saves automatically to your SEO Dashboard, so last month’s numbers are there without re-running anything. The file you saved in Step 3 gives Claude the full list to compare line by line.

A site dropping off the list has either removed the link or, on a profile above 100 sites, slipped out of the top 100. Check the page before you act. If a strong link really is gone, write to the owner. That is link building, and link building with Claude covers the pitch.

What the audit costs in credits

ContextBolt SEO runs on credits. Research calls cost one, backlink calls cost three. Here is the whole audit from this guide.

• Backlink overview of your domain: 3 credits.
• Referring domains, the strongest 100: 3 credits.
• Checking three doubtful sites on their own: 9 credits.
• Matching the Search Console exports, drafting redirects and the disavow file: 0 credits. Claude works from what you paste in.

That is 15 credits for a full first audit, and 6 credits for each monthly re-check after it. The 7-day free trial includes 100 credits, so the first audit fits several times over before you pay anything. After the trial the plan is $35 a month for 1,000 credits, which also covers keyword research, site audits and AI visibility checks.

Where this stops

It is not a toxic-link scanner. There is no per-link “toxic” verdict in this workflow, on purpose. The spam score is a read across your whole profile, and Google says it handles most spam links on its own. If you want a red number to worry about, this is the wrong tool.

The list stops at the strongest 100 sites. On a bigger profile the weakest tail is only visible through the Search Console export, and Search Console itself is a sample.

It does not change your site or send anything. Claude drafts the redirects and the disavow file. You read them, your developer ships the redirects, and you upload the file and email site owners yourself. An agent should never submit a disavow file for you, because one wrong line throws away a link you earned.

What you end up with is a short list of links worth protecting, a set of redirects that turn dead links back into votes, and a saved snapshot to compare next month. ContextBolt SEO starts with a 7-day free trial, and the first audit fits inside it.