Link profile
A link profile is the full set of links pointing to your website: how many there are, which sites they come from and what they say.
A link profile is the full set of links that point to your website from other sites. It covers how many links you have, how many different sites they come from, which of your pages they point to, and the words they're written in. SEO tools use it to judge how well a site is likely to rank, and to spot links that could get it into trouble.
What people look at
Nobody reads a link profile one link at a time. You look at its shape. Do the links come from a few hundred different sites, or from three sites linking thousands of times? Are they from sites about your subject? Do they point to your useful pages, or only your home page? Is the link text varied, the way people write naturally, or does it repeat the same keyword over and over?
For example, say Kestrel Roasters has links from 240 sites. Most are food blogs, local news and cafés that stock its beans, and they link with words like "Kestrel" or "this roaster in Leeds." That looks like a business people talk about. If 200 of those links came from unrelated sites that all said "best cheap coffee beans," it would look like someone built them.
Why it matters for AI search
A link profile is a list of the sites that already talk about you. When an AI platform searches the web before it answers, many of the pages it reads are the same kind of pages: reviews, roundups, directories and news. A page that links to you usually names you too, and the name is what an answer can repeat.
So the pages in your link profile are a good place to start when you check what the platforms read about you. A link profile can also show where you're missing: sites that link to your competitors and never mention you.
In AnswerOrbit
We don't count your backlinks. Sources shows the pages the AI platforms actually used for your prompts, and its Gaps tab lists the ones that name a competitor and not you. Set that next to your link profile from an SEO tool to see which of the sites that matter to the answers already know you.