Link gap

Link Gap finds the domains that link to your competitors but not to you. It takes your competitors’ backlink profiles, intersects them, and subtracts your own — leaving the referring domains that are already willing to link to sites like yours but haven’t linked to you yet. Those are your warmest outreach prospects: a domain that links to three of your competitors has demonstrably decided your space is worth linking to, which makes it a far better bet than a cold, unrelated site. This panel turns that intersection into a ranked target list.

Backlink data comes from VisibilityIQ’s backlink index. There’s nothing to connect and no API key — running the analysis draws on your project’s included monthly data budget.

What you’ll need

• A synced backlink profile for your own domain (see Backlinks overview), so the analysis knows which domains to subtract.
• Enough monthly data budget to run the analysis. The trigger discovers competitor domains and pulls their profiles, which consumes budget.

How to use

1. Go to Project → Backlinks → Link Gap.
2. Run the analysis. The trigger automatically discovers up to 20 competitor domains, pulls each one’s backlink profile, intersects them, and removes any domain that already links to you.
3. Set a minimum authority filter to drop low-value domains and keep the list focused on links worth earning.
4. Sort to bring the strongest targets to the top — high authority, linking to the most competitors.

How to read the results

Each gap row describes one referring domain you don’t yet have:

Column	What it tells you
Referring domain	The domain that links to competitors but not to you — your outreach target.
Domain authority	How strong that domain is. A link from a high-authority domain carries more weight.
Total backlinks	How many links the domain points outward overall — context on how freely it links.
Competitors linked	How many of your competitors this domain already links to. Higher is a stronger signal that it’s relevant and reachable.
Referring pages	The specific pages on that domain that link out, so you know where a link to you might fit.

The two columns that decide priority are domain authority and competitors linked. A high-authority domain linking to several competitors is the strongest possible target — it’s powerful, it’s relevant to your space, and the fact that multiple rivals earned a link there suggests you can too.

The outreach workflow

1. Filter by minimum authority to cut the noise — set the floor where a link starts being worth the effort.
2. Sort by competitors linked descending, then by domain authority. The top of that list is where your competitors are all getting links and you aren’t.
3. For each target, open its referring pages to understand why it links to competitors — a resource list, a review roundup, a guest post, a partner directory — and tailor your pitch to fit that context.
4. Work top-down. The domains linking to the most competitors at the highest authority are your best opportunities; the long tail of low-authority, single-competitor domains can wait.

This finds opportunities and ranks them by quality — it doesn’t promise the link or any ranking change. Earning the link is still outreach work; Link Gap just makes sure you spend that work on the targets most likely to pay off.

Refreshing the data

Re-run the analysis whenever your competitor set changes or after you’ve earned some of the links it surfaced — a fresh run re-discovers competitors and re-intersects against your current profile, so links you’ve since won drop off the list. Each run draws from your included monthly data budget. If recurring auto-sync is enabled in Project → Settings, the underlying profiles stay current on the project’s schedule.

Next steps

• Backlinks overview — your own profile, which Link Gap subtracts from the competitor intersection.
• Link velocity — watch your new earned links show up in the gained-domains trend.
• Toxic links — vet a prospect’s spam risk before you chase a link from it.