Domain Popularity is a measure of the number of domains that link to a website.
What is Domain Popularity?
Domain Popularity is another way to measure the volume of inbound links: it indicates how many domains provide links to a web page. The difference between Domain Popularity and Link Popularity is that Domain Popularity does not take into account the number of backlinks that come from each domain.
It makes no difference whether the domain has 1 or 1,000,000 links; Domain Popularity only counts one link per linking domain.
In addition to Domain Popularity, there are several metrics that can be used to evaluate the volume of incoming links. These include link, network and IP popularity.
Using Domain Popularity to evaluate the link profile
When looking at the backlink profile of a domain, Domain Popularity is often a much more reliable indicator of how a page is performing than simply looking at the total number of inbound links. You can find more on this in our study – ‘A Comparison of the SEO key figures: number of links and domain popularity’. (German)
Conclusion
When evaluating the backlink profile of a page for the purpose of link building, it is interesting to know the total number of all links that point to a page. However, it is not uncommon for individual domains to send many thousands of links to other domains.
This can either happen intentionally, e.g. due to a footer link on every sub-page, or it can arise as a result of technical problems, e.g. if a document with a link makes it into the index via many different URLs (see Duplicate Content for further information).
The evaluation of domain popularity avoids this distortion of the overall picture and provides a clearer indication of a domain’s link profile. Generally speaking, it is preferable if a high number of domains are linking to a site.
Of course, there are nuances to consider here as well. There are large, trustworthy domains with a wide reach that are far more important than others – and it is important to focus on these domains.
