Check your citations, listings and backlinks (Citations & Links)

Citations & Links audits each branch's citations and directory listings against the right name, address and phone, finds new directories through your backlinks, shows the sites that link to your website, where competitors are listed and you aren't, and which linking sites AI answers rely on. It can also export a disavow file of spam links for Google Search Console.

Citations & Links checks your business from the outside. It checks every branch's directory listings (your citations) against the right name, address and phone, finds new directories through the sites that link to your website, shows who links to the website, and shows which of those sites the AI answers for your keywords rely on.

Where Citations & Links lives

In the sidebar, open Reputation > Citations & Links (/dashboard/links-listings).

The page lists your websites, not your locations. If several branches share one website, they appear together on one card with their towns named, and one audit covers all of them. Each card shows when the website was last audited, how many sites link to it, its authority, how many directories link to it, and how its listings checked out.

Websites you have not audited yet sit in a list underneath. A location with no website has no links to read, so add one to it first.

Note: Citations & Links is available on paid plans. Each plan includes a number of runs a month (Starter 5, Pro 20, Agency 30) and a number of citation checks (Starter 2, Pro 12, Agency 25). What's left shows at the top of the page and on Usage & Billing, and both reset on the 1st.

Running an audit

Click Run audit on a website and confirm. The audit:

Reads the website's links, which takes about a minute.
Checks every branch's citations: the directories chosen for your business type and country, plus any new directory found through your links. Results fill in over the next few minutes, and the page updates on its own.

An audit uses one run, plus one citation check for each branch. Listings and links change slowly, so each website can be audited once every 28 days. The page shows Due for a re-check when the next audit is available, and the button shows the date until then. Nothing runs automatically.

A branch whose name, address and phone you haven't confirmed is checked against the details on its Google profile, and its Citations tab asks you to confirm them for the most accurate results. A branch is skipped, and the page says why, if it is already being checked or your plan's citation checks for the month are used up.

If a result looks wrong, open the row and click Wrong? to tell us. It doesn't change the row (use This is mine or the status control for that), but every report is checked and used to make the checks more accurate.

The six tabs

Overview

Citation health: a score out of 100 across the branches checked. A correct listing counts in full, and a listing with missing details counts as half.
Listings correct, Listings to fix and the number of directories with no listing yet.
Sites linking and Cited by AI answers, from the website's links.
Citations by branch: every branch with its score, worst first. Click one to open its citations.
Your links: the kinds of site linking to you, how strong they are, what the links say, and when they first appeared.

Citations

Pick a branch to see its full citation table. Every directory shows one of these results:

Verified: the name, address and phone match.
Issues: the listing exists but a detail is wrong or missing. You see which field, what the listing shows and what it should be.
Not found: we searched the directory for your name, area and phone and found no listing. Search can miss a listing that exists, so if you are listed, use This is mine or add your listing link, and it counts straight away.
Needs review: we couldn't be sure, so check it yourself.
Discovered: a directory we found through your links that isn't on the standard list for your sector.

Social profiles sits at the top of the tab. For each profile the branch has (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest or X), it shows whether your website links it, whether your website's schema lists it, and whether your Business Profile links it. Each answer is Yes, No or Not known: Not known means we couldn't read your website, your Business Profile isn't connected, or Google hasn't shared social links for any profile we watch yet, and it is never counted as a gap. If your website and Business Profile point at different pages on the same platform, it says so. Use Not mine to hide a profile that isn't yours, Add a profile to add one we didn't find, and Check website again after changing your website. Social rows in the table carry a Social label and read Found when the profile was confirmed from your website's link, because a social page rarely shows a full address to compare.

Use This is mine to confirm a listing, set a status yourself, or paste your listing's link. Manual changes count towards the score straight away. A listing that was found before and has since gone shows as Lost. Actions lists what to fix, and Directories lets you choose which directories each branch is checked on. Edit details changes the name, address and phone that every directory is checked against, and Report opens the branch's latest citation audit in full.

Missing

Answers cite these, they don't link to you: sites the AI answers for your keywords rely on, across all your branches, that don't link to your website.
Linking to your competitors, not to you: directories and articles that link to the competitors you have compared, and not to you.
Major directories for your sector with no link to you: places to check. Many directories list a business without linking to its website, so this is a checklist rather than proof you're missing.

Links

Every site linking to the website, with what it is, its authority, how often AI answers cite it, when it was first seen, and the competitors it appears with. Links to under each site shows which of your pages it links to: click one to open that page on the Pages tab. Listings that link to you shows each listing page that links to the website, matched to the branch whose details it shows.

To track a linking site as a citation, choose Add to Citations under its name. A directory we know is checked at the branch's next audit, like every other directory. Any other site is saved as the branch's listing straight away. If the website has several branches, you choose which one the listing is for. Adding a site doesn't use a run.

If we've got a site wrong, click its label under What it is and choose what it is: a directory or listing site, an article, a business website or low quality. The row moves to the right filter straight away. Your label is used for your account only, and Use our label again puts ours back.

Export a disavow file

Export disavow file (above the table) turns the sites labelled low quality into a file for Google's disavow links tool, with the steps to upload it. Untick any site you want to keep. To add a site, change its label to low quality first.

Important: Most websites never need a disavow file. Google already ignores most spam links, and disavowing a good link by mistake can cost you rankings. Use it if Search Console has warned you about unnatural links to your site (a manual action), or if you or someone working for you paid for links.

To use the file:

Open the disavow links tool in Search Console and choose your website. You need to be its owner there.
Choose the version that starts with https://, as the tool doesn't work with Domain properties. If you have more than one version, such as http and https, upload the file to each.
If you've uploaded a disavow file before, copy its lines into the new one first. Every upload replaces the whole list.
Upload the file. If a line is wrong, the tool says so straight away and keeps your old list.

It takes a few weeks to take effect. The links still show on the Links tab afterwards, because they still exist. Only the whole website's links can be exported, not one page's or one branch's, because one file covers the whole website.

To compare a competitor, type their website into Compare or pick one of your tracked competitors. Their links appear next to yours, and the headline becomes Listed for them, not you. Comparing uses one run and doesn't check any citations.

Pages

Every page of the website that other sites link to, most linked first, with how many sites link to it, the authority of the strongest of them, and how many of those sites the AI answers cite. Search for a page by its address (for example /contact), sort by Most linked, Strongest, Cited by answers or A to Z, and use Branch pages to see only your branches' own pages.

Click a page to see every site linking to it, with the same filters, labels and Add to Citations as the Links tab. All pages takes you back to the list.

For the website as a whole we hold each site's strongest links, so a site that links to many of your pages is counted under the ones we hold. A branch with its own page on the website (like /locations/birmingham) has that page read on its own, so its count isn't limited to those.

History

Every citation audit for each branch, each with its full report, and every run of the website's links with the number of linking sites, directories, AI-cited sites and lost links.

Good to know

Building or submitting listings for you isn't part of SearchOps. Citations & Links shows what to fix and where to get listed, and you or your team make the changes.
Low quality sites are scrapers, spam and link schemes. They rarely help, and they are rarely worth worrying about. If you do need to disavow them, see Export a disavow file above.
A site marked Not identified yet is still being checked. The page fills in on its own.