About the people and the index behind RankBrain Marketing
We write for marketers who want evidence about machine-learning ranking and are tired of confident guesses. The data underneath comes from our own crawler.
What we run
RankBrain Marketing is the editorial side of a backlink data API. The service returns backlinks, referring domains, anchors, top pages and a 0 to 100 Domain Rating in JSON.
Our own crawler and our own link index feed it: 181,132,097 domains, 2,774,625,913 domain-to-domain links and about 798.5 billion backlinks. We refresh roughly once a month.
That is slower than Ahrefs or Semrush. Treat it accordingly. They also offer keywords and rank tracking, which we do not.
We would rather be checked than believed. Every limit therefore sits in plain view, near the claim it qualifies.
How we write
Examples say they are examples
Any invented number is labelled as invented, in the first lines of the page.
Dates over adjectives
We cite announcements by month, such as the helpful content update in August 2022.
Limits stated
Where our data cannot answer a question, the page says so and points elsewhere.
Why a data-science voice
Our editors lean on habits from data work: state the sample, name the date, keep the claim as small as the evidence. It makes for plainer pages and fewer fireworks.
One question keeps returning. Can Google's machine-learning systems be gamed with links? The honest answer is that nobody outside Google has shown it. We say so on the myth page and keep that stance.
The second constant is what to do after a ranking drop. We built the hypothetical walkthrough to model patience: measure first, theorise later.
Third come practical clean-ups: spam anchors, redirects, pages Google will not index. Each has a page with its steps and its credit costs.
What the data covers
The index is domain-level at its core and page-level where it matters. You can ask for referring domains, backlinks, anchors, top pages and an anchor cloud, plus a search over anchors, titles and URLs.
Two actions suit research on rival sites: intersect for shared linkers among two to ten domains, and keyword for who is linked with an exact anchor. Each is billed once per call, whatever the number of rows returned.
Free actions exist so you can judge fit before paying: domain, overview, stats and suggest. Use them first. Reading the recipe for moves also shows typical call costs.
Everything on the site follows the same data limits, and we repeat them near the top of pages where they matter.
How to reach us
Contact goes through your account page. Sign in with Google there to send a request.
If a page of ours states something you can show is wrong, send the evidence and we will correct the page and note the date.
Sign-in uses a Google account only. Credit top-ups use USDT on TRC-20, from the account page, and new accounts receive $100 of free credit with no card.
Where we are headed
We plan to keep the index growing and the monthly refresh steady rather than chase daily freshness. That is a deliberate trade for a low per-call price.
We will add pages when readers keep asking the same new question, and retire ones the evidence has overtaken. Corrections will carry a date.
What the service does and does not do
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Return backlinks and referring domains as JSON? | Yes, up to 1,000 rows per call |
| Return a 0 to 100 Domain Rating? | Yes, our own log-scale metric |
| Track keyword positions daily? | No; use Ahrefs or Semrush |
| Refresh daily? | No; about monthly |
| Require a subscription? | No; prepaid credit from $0.10 per 1,000 calls |