Sample Report · Audit Authority · September 2026
More than 6,000 pages link to this site. One in a hundred works against it.
This is a real authority report, with the client’s name removed. This is what the authority section of the SEO and GEO audit looks like. It shows where the links come from, which ones are hurting the site, and how it stacks up against the competition.
6,090 link pages, by source
Familiar domain · 4,156 pages68
Unfamiliar · 1,934 pages32
Of those, 61 pages were classified as toxic: one in a hundred.
Link profile viewed on the EQwise SEO & GEO platform on September 21, 2026, with link data from sources including Majestic. The name, address, industry, and names of the competitors being compared have been omitted. The figures have not been adjusted.
The Essence in Four Numbers
Link Pages
6.090
web pages elsewhere on the web that link to this site
Familiar
68 %
is hosted on a domain that is itself considered trustworthy (4.156)
Toxic
61
Classified as toxic: one in a hundred; still to be evaluated
Lowest score
0,0
based on the two most comprehensive lists, each containing nearly 5,000 links
The backlinkBacklink A link on another website that points to your website. profile is healthy in terms of size and origin: two out of three linking domainsReferring Domains The number of unique websites (domains) that link to your website or page. are trusted themselves. The problem lies in the tail. 61 pages have been flagged as toxicToxic link A link from an unreliable or spammy website that can harm your search engine visibility., and no one at the client’s end requested this; these are automated lists that include thousands of domains at once.
They should be evaluated and, where necessary, rejected. That’s routine—not a scandal.
Where the links come from
A backlink is a link from another site to yours. Search enginesSearch engine A website used to search the internet, such as Google or Bing. interpret such a link as a recommendation, and they take into account who is making the recommendation. That’s why this report not only counts how many pages link to you, but also whether those pages are hosted on a trustworthy domain.
Two out of three linking sites are hosted on a domain that is itself trusted. “Untrusted” means unknown or low-trust, not malicious; that group is one hundred times smaller and is discussed in the next section.
Two questions about the link profile
Malicious Links, and What to Do About Them
Of the 6,090 link pages, 61 have been flagged as toxic. These are pages that link to the site without anyone asking them to. They have a trust score of zero and hundreds to thousands of other links on the same page. Two of them, as listed on the platform:
| Links Page | Verdict | Title | Trust | Links on this page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Directory List A | Reject automatic list, no value | Directory Pages Index | 0,0 | 4.999 |
| Directory List B | Reject —same list under a second domain | Directory Pages Index | 0,0 | 4.999 |
| other 59 | Evaluate one by one, not based on scores alone | — | — | — |
Both lists have exactly the same path and the same title: one script, two domains. Pages like these add thousands of domains without anyone submitting them. There is no indication that these links were purchased.
What Happens Next, in Three Steps
- Rate. Each of the 61 is reviewed. A score alone is not a reason to reject a link: a good link that is mistakenly rejected costs more than spam ever does.
- Compare. Check against the list of rejected links that your own team may have already submitted to Google, to ensure there are no duplicates or inconsistencies.
- Reject. The bad ones are added to a list that Google asks to be ignored. Search engines already filter out most spam on their own; this is about eliminating a risk, not repairing damage.
This site alongside three competitors
AuthorityAuthority How much trust search engines and AI have in your website. is relative. A backlink profile is only considered strong or weak when compared to those of the sites you’re competing with for the same buyer. To do this, the platform compares the site’s profile to those of three competitors that appear in the same search resultsSearch Results The page containing links and advertisements that you see after searching for something on Google..
Two metrics you’ll find in every link report
Trust FlowTrust Flow A Majestic score from 0 to 100 that indicates the trustworthiness of the links pointing to a website. indicates how closely a site is connected to a core group of manually reviewed, trustworthy sites. A link from a university or a trade association scores high; a link from an automatically generated list does not.
Citation FlowCitation Flow A Majestic score from 0 to 100 that measures the link equity of a website, primarily based on the number of links pointing to it. indicates how many links point to a site, regardless of who they come from. Many links and little trust is typical of a site that has been spammed. Few links and a lot of trust is typical of a site that relies on a few good recommendations.
As of September 21, the traffic figures for the three competitors were not yet available on the platform. Therefore, only their estimated traffic is shown below.
How to Read a Link Comparison
- Trust over CitationCiting An AI assistant that uses your page as a source and typically includes a link to it.. If Trust Flow is close to Citation Flow, then the links come from reputable sources. If Citation Flow is significantly higher, then many of the links come from sites that are insignificant in themselves.
- Referring domains are more meaningful than link pages. A thousand links from a single forum are worth less than ten links from ten industry publications.
- The left hole. The domains that link to competitor A but not yet to you are the first places to ask for a mentionMention A place where your business name is mentioned, with or without a link.. They’re already writing about your market and linking to a competitor.
What the traffic tells us
The platform also estimates the organic search traffic for this site and its competitors, month by month, based on rankings and search volumes. This is an estimate and not a count from your own statistics, but the trend is reliable.
| Site | Spring 2023 | Winter 2024/2025 | Summer 2026 | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| This site | ≈ 70 | ≈ 15,000 | ≈ 800 | declining; lower every quarter since early 2025 |
| Competitor A | ≈ 5,000 | ≈ 8,000 | ≈ 15,000 | rising, peaking at ≈ 90,000 in February 2026 |
| Competitor B | ≈ 1,500 | ≈ 7,000 | ≈ 5,000 | flat |
| Competitor C | ≈ 1,000 | ≈ 3,500 | ≈ 3,000 | flat |
Two years ago, this site was the fastest riser on the list; since early 2025, its growth has slowed while that of competitor A has continued to rise. A backlink profile rarely explains such a dip on its own, but it’s the first place to look. It’s about lost links from industry media and partner sites, as well as new links that the competitor has managed to acquire in the meantime.
What This Does and Does Not Prove
What it proves
- How many pages link to the site, where they come from, and which of them have been flagged as toxic. Counted on September 21, 2026, and available for review on the platform.
- The projected search traffic trends over the next three years for this site and three competitors, from the same source on the same day.
What It Doesn’t Prove
- That the drop in traffic is due to the link profile. To determine this, we need the link history, along with information about changes to the site and the market during the same period.
- Whether a malicious link is already causing harm. Search engines ignore most spam on their own; blocking it is a precaution.
Here’s how the measurements were taken
A service provider with over two hundred pages, operating in an English-language market. Link analysis and toxic pages from the EQwise SEO & GEO platform, viewed on September 21, 2026, with link data from sources including Majestic for Trust Flow and Citation Flow. Traffic estimate from the competitor comparison on the same platform, on the same day, read from a logarithmic graph and therefore rounded.
The list of domains that link to competitors but do not yet link to this site is part of a follow-up analysis and is not included in this example.
Who links to your competitor but not yet to you?
Six thousand links don’t mean much without knowing who’s providing them. The gap between your link profile and that of the competitor vying for the same buyer is where the real work lies. These are sites that already write about your market and already link to someone else.
