Backlinks and Competitor Intelligence

Backlink data and Competitor Intelligence answer different questions. Backlinks show which sites link to a domain. Competitor Intelligence compares the search terms and ranking pages of sites you have confirmed for one of your own sites.

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Backlink rows are metered monthly. Pro includes up to 10,000 rows per month and Agency includes up to 100,000. Stored reports remain readable after the monthly cap is reached.

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The site workspace

Open a site and choose Competitors. The workspace keeps the portfolio, keyword landscapes, content comparisons, monitoring, traffic estimates, and stored reports together. Pro can select up to three confirmed competitors for one landscape report. Agency can select up to ten. A site can retain up to ten active competitors.

Starter accounts can read the upgrade explanation. If an operator pauses new work, stored reports remain readable. A plan downgrade can also leave stored data in read-only mode.

Units and confirmation

A landscape report uses one keyword_lookups unit for each selected competitor. Comparing three competitors uses three units. RankMeFast shows the exact unit and row ceiling before confirmation, and cache hits still count. A discovery refresh is optional and uses one additional keyword_lookups unit only after a separate preview and confirmation.

The comparison runs three bounded keyword checks for each selected competitor: shared terms, terms only your site ranks for, and terms only the competitor ranks for. Each check retains at most 100 rows. An Agency report with ten competitors can therefore retain at most 3,000 keyword rows.

Reading a landscape

The report uses five classes:

• missing: the competitor ranks and your site was not observed.
• owned_only: your site ranks and the competitor was not observed.
• shared_behind: both rank and your position is lower.
• shared_ahead: both rank and your position is higher.
• shared_even: both have the same observed position.

Ranks, ranking URLs, and observation dates are source facts. Search volume and difficulty are provider estimates. Classes, confidence, and recommendations are derived from the retained evidence. A missing value stays missing; RankMeFast does not fill it with a guess. Partial reports show how many competitors and source steps returned usable data.

Ranking pages and content

Agency reports can suggest pairs of ranking pages. Review both URLs before starting a content comparison. You may replace a suggested competitor URL with another public URL on the same confirmed domain. RankMeFast does not start a crawl from a suggestion and does not silently substitute a homepage.

The confirmed content comparison uses a separate competitor_content_runs unit. Reviewing a page match does not use that unit. Monitoring is also a separate, explicit action.

Recommendations stay inside the report until you accept one. Acceptance creates one durable item in Next Actions. It does not publish content or start another paid job.

Stored reports and exports

Reopening a landscape or historical content run does not start a provider call or use another unit. PDF, CSV, and JSON exports use the stored snapshot. PDF refuses a selection above 1,000 keyword rows and points you to CSV or JSON. CSV and JSON keep the complete selected set within the 3,000-row report limit and the shared download size limit.

Old competitor bookmarks open the Competitors tab. The old Content Intelligence competitor link opens the Content view, and the standalone Keyword Gap keeps its own history and per-competitor keyword_lookups accounting.

Backlink scores and traffic figures are estimates based on provider coverage. Compare observations from the same source and date instead of treating them as first-party analytics.

See Plans, limits and credits for current allowances and Content Intelligence for the separate content workflow.

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