Backlink Profile Coverage explains, in percent of the total known number backlinks to a domain, how much was actually covered in a backlink analysis.

SEOs and Webmasters sometimes forget, that by looking at a couple percent of the whole phonebook ("a percentage of all linking domains") you cannot extrapolate to the rest of the phonebook (i.e. know all the linking domains and their impact on the analyzed website.

A Backlink Profile Coverage of 100% is desirable because then all calculated complex metrics like DTOXRISK become more reliable.

In many cases, the really toxic links part of a Negative SEO attack or causing Google Penalties hide in the part that you'll find in a "Complete Backlink Audit", but not in "Basic Link Audit", and certainly not in "Trial Link Audit".

Understanding Backlink Profile Coverage

The video below explains the calculation of Link Detox Risk^® and why a high Backlink Profile Coverage is important for it.

Examples for Backlink Profile Coverage impact

Is 5% Backlink Profile Coverage good enough?

When looking at 5% of a Backlink Profile, you may get a completely "toxic" result for the domain, or a very good one, any possible outcome actually.

Doing such very partial audits was possible until the beginning of 2017 in LinkResearchTools (LRT), until we started to educate the market on the problems that come with that.

Is 50% Backlink Profile Coverage good enough?

Even when looking at 50% of a Backlink Profile, you may, for example, get a completely "toxic" result for the domain, or an average one, any possible outcome actually still.

Doing such very partial audits was possible until the beginning of 2017 in LinkResearchTools (LRT), until we started to educate the market on the problems

The closer Backlink Profile Coverage gets to 100%, the better

The closer the Backlink Profile Analysis gets to 100%, the more reliable the result becomes. In the example below, you see that the small (missing) slice could be very toxic or very good still (as we would not know those domains). However, the impact on the overall analysis and DTOXRISK calculated will be very little.