# Stored Backlinks: Ask About Your Links as Often as You Like

Backlinks for your tracked domains are now stored, so repeat questions are free and you can see which links you lost. Brand mentions get clearer labels too.

A backlink profile changes slowly, but until now every question about one was a fresh DataForSEO call. Ask about your strongest links, then your anchors, then the same thing filtered to dofollow, and you paid each time for data that had barely moved.

**Backlinks are now stored for the domains you track, on every plan with a DataForSEO connection.** Asking again, filtering and sorting cost nothing, and because stored links stay after they disappear from the web, your AI can tell you which links you lost and when.

## Choose the Domains That Matter

Edit your DataForSEO connection and tick **Backlinks** under **Tools the AI can use**. Add up to 2 of **Your domains**, and if the property has a Search Console connection you can fill that in with one click. **Competitor domains** are optional, up to 5.

Links are fetched the first time the AI needs them, then read from storage. Any other domain, or a single page URL, is still looked up live each time and is not stored.

## What You Pay For

Every DataForSEO call is billed to your own account, at about $0.03, or about $0.06 for a full page of 1,000 links.

A stored domain is refreshed when the AI uses it and its links are more than 7 days old, with a full refresh every 30 days. If nobody uses a domain, nothing is spent on it. That matters most for competitors, which are only ever refreshed when used.

Turn on **Refresh backlinks weekly** if you want your own domains kept current regardless. It is off by default. For a site with about 5,000 links it costs roughly $0.08 a week plus $0.40 for the monthly full refresh.

One lookup makes at most 3 calls, so the first fetch of a bigger site takes a few lookups. Until it finishes, the AI answers with a live lookup and says so.

## New and Lost Links

A live index only tells you what exists now. Stored links keep their history: which ones are new, which disappeared and when, and how many came and went each month. "What did we lose this quarter?" is a question you can now ask directly.

Sites with more than 20,000 links are stored as a sample of the strongest and newest links, and the AI says so. Anchor lookups for those sites stay live, because anchor counts can't be worked out from a sample.

## A Backlinks Page

Ticking **Backlinks** also adds a page to the property's sidebar. It lists the stored links with their status, rank, spam score and date found, alongside your top referring domains and anchors. Filter by domain, status, text, date and dofollow links. Browsing costs nothing.

Property admins can press **Refresh now** to update a domain straight away, which makes up to 10 calls and skips domains refreshed in the last hour. The connection settings show each domain's stored links, last refresh and spend, with **Remove stored data** to delete them.

## Clearer Labels on Brand Mentions

Brand mentions get an upgrade in the same release. The sentiment score we launched with reads a page's wording, not what it says about you, and a standard legal disclaimer can look negative. In a trial on one brand's 199 stored stories, all 12 "negative" results and 146 of the 149 "positive" ones only named the brand, and 195 of the 199 were sales listings.

So stored mentions are now read automatically in the background to see what kind of page each one is and how it treats your brand:

- **Critical** and **favourable** mean the page says something about the company itself
- **Just named** means it only names you, for example as a seller

The **Favourable / critical** tile on the Brand mentions page counts them, and clicking a count filters the list. Pages recognised as sales listings are hidden by default, and **Show mentions hidden by noise filters** brings them back. The labels are automatic, so read the text before acting on one. A mention keeps a rougher label until it has been read.

## Getting Started

Open a property's **Connections** tab and edit your DataForSEO connection, or add one. Tick **Backlinks**, add your domains and any competitors, then ask your AI who links to you and what changed.

The setup guide is in the [documentation](/docs/connecting-data-sources/#stored-backlinks).