Runbook
Traffic fell last week. Run this link audit first
Panic makes people disavow things that never mattered. This runbook takes one afternoon, costs pennies in credit, and ends with a list of decisions instead of a feeling.
Before you touch anything
Most drops are not link problems
Look at the dates first. If the fall lines up with a named Google update, a migration or a robots change, links are probably a side character. Still, an hour on the link side rules a lot out.
- Open Search Console, then Manual Actions. Empty means no manual penalty.
- Write down the exact day traffic changed.
- Only then check my sites backlinks and compare against that date.
The afternoon, in order
Save the headline numbers (free)
Call overview for your domain. Keep the raw JSON in a dated file. It costs nothing, and it is the baseline for every later comparison.
Pull referring domains (2 credits)
One refdomains call returns up to 1,000 rows for a single charge. Sites with more can page through, capped at 50,000 rows.
Pull anchors (2 credits)
Skim the anchors result for sudden themes: pharmacy words, casino words, a foreign language you never target. A big cluster of one odd anchor is the classic sign of a pasted-in spam wave.
Score the neighbours (1 credit)
Feed the questionable domains to bulk_dr, up to 2,000 per call. A cluster of DR 0-3 domains with no real pages is noise, and noise is mostly ignored.
Mark every row
Three labels: lost, junk, fine. Keep the sheet. You will want it when someone asks why you did, or did not do, anything.
The three calls, copy-ready
Swap in your own domain and key. Each authenticated response carries _credits with the cost and what remains.
curl "https://backlinkphoenix.com/api.php?action=overview&q=yourshop.com" > overview-oct.json
curl "https://backlinkphoenix.com/api.php?action=refdomains&q=yourshop.com&per=1000&key=sk_live_..." > refdomains-oct.json
curl "https://backlinkphoenix.com/api.php?action=anchors&q=yourshop.com&per=500&key=sk_live_..." > anchors-oct.jsonWhat each finding usually means
| You see | Likely meaning | Sensible move |
|---|---|---|
| Referring domains fell by a third overnight | Our monthly refresh caught a big crawl change, or a network of donors died | Compare with a rival's trend before worrying |
| Hundreds of new junk domains, same odd anchor | Spam wave or a negative-SEO attempt | Log it, watch it, read the disavow myths |
| A few strong referrers vanished | Real losses; a redirect or page removal is a common cause | Contact the sites, restore the target page |
| Nothing odd in links | The cause lies elsewhere | Look at content, indexing, the migration notes |
Our index refreshes about once a month. A link added or removed last week might not appear yet, and a Search Console report can run ahead of any third-party crawler.
Reading the result without fooling yourself
A link list is evidence. It is not a verdict. Google has said for years that its systems ignore most spammy links, and the December 2022 link spam update, powered by SpamBrain, made that more explicit. A messy profile alone rarely explains a fall.
What does hurt? Losing links that were doing real work. Three strong referring domains that disappear can matter more than three hundred junk ones that appear. Sort by what a visitor would trust, not by raw count.
Finish by writing one sentence: 'The drop began on this day, and the link evidence points to this.' If you cannot complete it, the links are not your lead, and the DR glossary can stop a false alarm over the score.
Also remember the calendar. The March 2024 core update and the August 2025 spam update each coincided with waves of 'my links must be bad' worries. In many of those cases the content or intent match had shifted. Check Search Console's performance report by page before blaming anyone.