backlink-guard

Check a link source before you submit to it, the link after it goes live, and your own backlinks for link spam.

⭐ 37 of 40 Ahrefs-marked spam sites kept from "submit", on 100 sites it had never seen · on PyPI, the official MCP Registry and skills.sh

Quick start · How well it works · Where to be · Competitors · AI answers · Keys · Agents and MCP · 中文说明

Find the pages your searchers already land on, the sites that link to your competitors and not to you, the sites Google's AI Overviews cite for your keywords, and what AI assistants answer when asked for what you make; check a link source before you submit your site to it, check the link after it goes live, look at your own backlink profile for the patterns Google calls link spam, and find the links that point at pages of yours that are gone or redirect badly.

Most backlink tools help you send more. This one tells you where not to send, and when to slow down.

Quick start

pip install backlink-guard
backlink-guard vet mcpservers.org turbo0.com navi.tools producthunt.com clawhomepage.com

Python 3.10 or newer, no dependencies; uvx backlink-guard vet … runs it without installing. With no key it reads the sites' own pages, for free (--free asks for just that). The keys (GoAnyAPI, and Glasser or AIsa) add rating, visits, Google's index and spam scores: about $0.17 for one site and $0.46 for thirty, so check the sites you are considering in one run.

Checked with both keys on 2026-10-13 and 14:

Action is what to do with the site: skip, look first, free only, low value or submit. It reads three answers that are also shown apart. Link policy: what a link there would mean under Google's link spam policies, one finding being enough; mcpservers.org sells followed links, so list there for free and never pay. Value: what a listing can bring, which is the site's reach, or none when nobody can reach it (dead, parked, dropped by Google, a shortener, a network page). The verdict weighs every finding: one avoid finding makes avoid, and caution takes two caution findings. Risk is 3 for each avoid finding and 1 for each caution. A site its own pages put at avoid, like navi.tools, gets no paid check.

Every finding comes with the text or the numbers it was read from:

turbo0.com — ⚠️ A high rating with almost no visitors: the rating comes from links, not readers. rating 81, about 2,218 visits a month. ⚠️ It asks for a link or badge back as a condition. "Free $0 … Backlink to our site is required." (Google: Excessive link exchanges, or requiring a link as part of an arrangement)

Sites that share a page template or an analytics or ads account, with each other or with sites from an earlier check on the same machine, are flagged as one operator's. When most of them have something else against them and the shared spam-link list lacks them, the report ends with a link to a filled-in report for that list; nothing is sent until you submit it.

How well it works

The rules were chosen on 100 sites they had never seen (2026-10-16): 40 that Ahrefs marks SPAM and 60 it does not.

• Every normal-labelled site called avoid does not load or has no pages in Google.
• Of 16 sites around shared checkout links, all 10 network or hacked sites come out skip, and 5 of the 6 that merely cite those products come out submit.
• What a listing brings follows reach: on two sites' analytics, 2 of 37 and 1 of 73 referring domains rated low had sent a visit, against 10 of 14 and 2 of 7 rated high.
• The ten well-known directories and communities all come out submit.

Nine tests, with their data and what each changed: docs/validation.md.

Where to be: find

A link is first a way in for visitors. A page that ranks for your keyword already gets the people looking for what you make, so a mention there is the most relevant link there is.

python -m backlink_guard find "claude skills" "claude code skills" "agent skills" --site agentskillshub.top

Three keywords, 30 results each: $0.027 on 2026-10-14. Visitors are monthly searches times the share of clicks a position usually gets, a size and not a count. --vet then vets the directories and article sites it found; pages on GitHub, Medium, YouTube or Reddit are judged by the page and its author, not the platform.

Links your competitors earned: competitors

The sites that already write about your competitors are the ones to tell about what you make. For each competitor, competitors lists the referring domains first seen in the last 7 days (the ones already linking to you left out), then the sites that link to two or more of the competitors and not to you, the link intersect. Each comes with a page that links, what kind of page it is and what can honestly be done there.

backlink-guard competitors yoursite.example --vs competitor-a.example competitor-b.example competitor-c.example

competitor-a.example: 941 new referring domains; 1 already link to you, left out

Site	Rank	First seen	Linking page	Kind
agenthub.example	195	2026-10-19	Skill install and guide	article
toolsdir.exam