Backlink
SEOAn inbound link from another website to yours. The count matters less than the number of distinct domains linking, their quality, and whether the links pass ranking signals.
SEO
Referring domain
A distinct website that links to yours at least once. Counted per domain rather than per link, which makes it a far better measure of a link profile than backlink count.
Also called linking domain, referring domains
A referring domain is one unique site that links to you, no matter how many individual links it carries. If a single blog links to your homepage from forty posts, that is forty backlinks and one referring domain.
Referring domain count is the more meaningful of the two numbers, because it measures breadth of endorsement rather than repetition. Most link-building goals are best stated in referring domains for exactly this reason, and it is the metric tracked for the badge program here: distinct domains where a weekly crawler confirms a present, followed badge, not raw link count.
Two practical consequences follow. A second link from a site that already links to you adds much less than a first link from a site that does not. And directory submissions have a natural ceiling, since each directory is one referring domain however many listings you hold on it.
This is also why badge embeds matter more than listings do, arithmetically. A listing gets you one link from the directory’s domain, shared with every other maker on it. A badge on each maker’s own site gets the directory a new referring domain per maker, which is a different kind of growth entirely.
Last reviewed .
See also
Domain rating
SEOA third-party score, usually 0 to 100, estimating the strength of a site’s backlink profile. Useful for rough comparison, and routinely oversold by directories as a product.
Badge embed
DirectoryA copy-paste snippet, usually an image wrapped in a link, that a maker installs on their own site to show they were featured on a directory.
Link attributes that tell search engines whether to pass ranking signals to the destination. Dofollow is the default; nofollow asks engines not to count the link as an endorsement.