Inbound link
An inbound link is a link from another website to yours. It's another name for a backlink.
An inbound link is a link from another website to a page on yours. It's another name for a backlink, and you'll see both used for the same thing. The opposite is an outbound link, from your site to someone else's, and a link between two pages of your own site is an internal link.
Inbound links matter for two reasons. They bring visitors who click them. And search engines read them as a sign that other people think your page is worth pointing to.
Which inbound links count
A link from a page people trust, on a subject close to yours, counts for more than one from a random directory. The words in the link, its anchor text, also tell search engines what your page is about. Links that are bought, swapped or made in bulk break Google's spam policies.
Inbound links and AI answers
When an AI platform searches before it answers, it reads the pages that rank, and it repeats the brands those pages name. So the page that links to you can help in two ways: the link helps your own page rank, and the platform can read the text around it and pass that on.
For example, a food magazine's roundup that links to Fernhill Coffee and calls it "the best subscription for decaf drinkers" helps Fernhill's subscription page rank. If an AI platform reads that roundup when asked about decaf subscriptions, the description is what ends up in the answer.
In AnswerOrbit
Sources shows which sites the AI answers to your prompts read, and the Gaps tab lists the ones that name your competitors and not you. Those are the pages where an inbound link, and a mention, would count most. See Sources.