Link velocity
Link velocity is the rate at which a site gains or loses backlinks over a period. No Google documentation names a safe rate, and its representatives have said the systems judge the links themselves rather than their pace. It is a metric tools sell and Google does not use.
By Théophile Louvart, founder of Porteur · Updated 15 September 2026 · Markdown
What a natural profile looks like
Real link profiles are bursty, not linear. A product earns a cluster of links in a week and almost none for two months, because links follow events.
| Event | What happens to the link count |
|---|---|
| A launch on a listing site | A dozen links and mentions in two days, then nothing |
| A piece of coverage | One good link, then the syndications and roundups that copy it |
| A tool that people cite | A slow trickle for years, the steadiest kind |
| A quiet quarter | Almost nothing, which is normal and not a signal of decline |
A chart of a healthy small site therefore looks like steps, not a slope. Tools that grade you on a smooth curve are grading you on a fiction.
When a spike is worth looking at
- You did not earn it. A sudden burst of links from sites you have never heard of is usually a negative-SEO burst, which Google says it ignores in nearly all cases.
- Someone you hired bought them. That is a policy problem whatever the pace, and it is the one case where the disavow file exists.
- A single page took off. That is not a problem, it is the thing you wanted.
What to measure instead
Count referring domains, not links
Ten links from one site are one relationship. The Links report in Search Console lists the sites; a link index lists more.
Look at who, not how many
A link from a site your buyers read is worth more than fifty from sites nobody visits. Read the list, do not just count it.
Track the traffic the links send
A referring domain that sends visitors is doing two jobs. Your analytics shows which ones do.
Judge quarterly
Links arrive in bursts, so a month is noise. Compare a quarter with the one before it.
Questions
No published figure exists. Google has said its systems judge the links rather than their pace, and natural profiles arrive in bursts around launches and coverage.
Earned links cannot. Bought links are a policy problem at any speed. A sudden burst you did not earn is usually ignored: Google says it neutralises such links in nearly all cases.
The question has no useful answer. A new product earning five real referring domains in its launch month is doing well; earning none for two months afterwards is normal.
They measure their own index, which discovers links at its own pace. A jump in a tool’s chart often means the crawler found old links, not that you gained new ones.
Almost never. Google says most sites do not need the disavow file, and that it is meant for a manual action for link spam or a history of paid links you cannot remove.
Check my site, free
The free check reads who links to your rivals and not to you, which is the list worth working on, in about thirty seconds.
- Free check, no card
- Read-only, your own accounts
- Readable by your agent
Read next
- GlossaryReferring domain
- GlossaryBacklink
- GuideToxic backlinks: a tool’s word, and what Google actually says
- GuideThe disavow tool: what it is for, and why you almost never need it
- GlossaryLink building
- GlossaryLink farm
- GuideReferring domains: what the count means and what moves it
- GuideLink velocity: the metric people worry about and Google does not publish