Routine
Measuring the climb back, one monthly snapshot at a time
Recovery is slow enough that memory fails. A snapshot on the same day each month turns hope into a line you can show a client. Think of it as a new backlinks checker run you repeat, not a tool you open once.
The five-call month
Overview (free)
Headline numbers, written to a dated file. Always start here.
Referring domains (2 credits)
The full list, up to 1,000 rows per call. Diff it against last month's file.
Anchors (2 credits)
Check that brand and URL anchors still dominate. Watch for a new exact-match cluster.
Top pages (2 credits)
Which of your pages draw links now. A repaired migration shows up here first.
Rival check (1 credit)
Compare up to 20 domains in one call to see whether you are closing the gap or standing still.
Why monthly, and why the same day
Our index refreshes roughly once a month. Snapshots taken more often just read the same data twice, and snapshots taken less often hide the slope you are trying to prove.
Pick a calendar date and keep it. The first-week audit gives you the opening baseline, and every later run compares itself with that file and the one before it.
Write the date of anything you change on the site next to the snapshot. A restored page in March and a link gain in May then read as cause and effect, or as coincidence, with honest uncertainty either way.
A tiny script for the diff
This sketch saves a dated file and lists referring domains new since last month. Adjust the file paths and keep your key out of version control.
D=yourshop.com
TODAY=$(date +%F)
curl -s "https://backlinkphoenix.com/api.php?action=refdomains&q=$D&per=1000&key=$KEY" > rd-$TODAY.json
# compare with last month's file using jq or any diff you like
diff <(jq -r '.. | strings' rd-prev.json | sort -u) <(jq -r '.. | strings' rd-$TODAY.json | sort -u)- for a typical monthly snapshot of one site (about $0.0006)
- ~6 credits
- credits free at sign-up
- 1,000,000
- such snapshots from the free credit, in principle
- ~166,000
- how often our index refreshes
- Monthly
What you can do with $100, honestly
The sums are tiny. A six-credit snapshot costs a fraction of a cent, so the free credit lasts for any realistic monitoring plan. The expensive part of recovery is time and fixes, never the data.
That freedom is worth using. Track your own site, your two closest rivals, and the old domain if you migrated. Ten sites at six credits each is sixty credits per month.
Keep expectations modest. We refresh about once a month, so a daily dashboard would just repeat the same numbers. For rank positions or daily crawl you will still want Ahrefs or Semrush beside this.
One more use. Score donors before you chase them. The bulk_dr action handles 2,000 domains for a single credit, so a whole outreach list can be ranked for a hundredth of a cent. Start from the pages listed in the action reference. Then drop the weakest half before anyone writes an email.
Last, pair the numbers with Search Console. Clicks and impressions show whether Google reacts, and links show why it might. Neither is enough alone, and neither replaces a look at the pages themselves.
Read the diff this way
- New referring domains: any real publishers among them? Note how they found you
- Lost referring domains: were they strong? Can the page be restored?
- Anchor mix: has the exact-match share moved?
- Top pages: is the same page still earning most links?
- Write one sentence in a log: what changed, what you did, what to look at next month