Run a risk check before you buy

Open a publication and click Risk check in its sidebar. The number next to Risk check shows how many signals need a look.

The summary strip

• Checks passed: signals that look fine, out of the checks run.
• To check: likely deal-breakers.
• To watch: worth a closer look.
• Not run yet: checks that need data loaded. Click Load data next to each one at the bottom of the list.

Every signal

Problems are listed first, and each line links to the page with the data behind it. The signals include:

• The Trust Flow : Citation Flow balance.
• Authority without an audience: a high DR with very little organic traffic, a common sign of a site built to sell links (see PBN).
• Whether traffic tools agree, DR falling from its peak, and traffic trends over 12 months.
• The share of visits from search, and whether traffic hangs on three keywords.
• Paid posts accepted in grey niches such as gambling or crypto.
• Spam score, backlinks per referring domain, external links per article and indexed pages.

Manual checks

Some things tools can't do for you. The right-hand panel lists the checks worth doing yourself, such as searching site:domain.com in Google, looking the domain up on the Wayback Machine, opening a recent sponsored post, and comparing our DR with your own Ahrefs or Semrush account. More in our guide How to evaluate a backlink.