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What does a backlink growth dashboard show in Metabase?

A backlink growth dashboard tracks the authority side of SEO analytics: domain rating over time, referring-domain totals, new vs. lost referring domains by week, and backlink velocity — with a competitor comparison to show whether the gap is opening or closing. It runs on daily snapshots synced from Ahrefs (the reference backlink index), Semrush, or SE Ranking backlink monitoring.

For: SEO and digital-PR teams accountable for link acquisition. Grain: one row per domain per day for authority snapshots, plus one row per gained or lost referring domain per day.

Which cards belong on a backlink growth dashboard?

  • Domain rating / authority score over time (line)
  • Referring domains total trend (line)
  • New vs. lost referring domains by week (stacked bar)
  • Backlink velocity — net new referring domains per week (line)
  • Top new referring domains by source authority (table)
  • Lost referring domains with lost reason (table)
  • Competitor referring-domain growth comparison (line)
  • New-link quality mix — gained domains by source-DR bucket (bar)

What data does the dashboard need?

  • ahrefs_authority_daily — target_domain, stat_date, domain_rating, referring_domains, backlinks — one row per tracked domain per day, including competitors.
  • ahrefs_backlink_changes — target_domain, stat_date, referring_domain, change_type (gained/lost), domain_rating_source, lost_reason — one row per change event.
  • Equivalent rollups work from Semrush (semrush_backlinks_summary) or SE Ranking (seranking_backlinks_daily) — just don't mix vendors' numbers in one card.
All of these numbers describe a vendor's index of the web, not the web itself. Coverage differs by vendor, scores aren't comparable across vendors, and index recrawls cause phantom gains and losses — pick one primary source and read changes against its own history.

How do you build it?

  1. Schedule a daily script against the Ahrefs API (no managed connector exists) pulling domain rating, referring-domain counts, and new/lost referring domains for your domain and competitors.
  2. Land authority snapshots and change events in separate tables — trends come from snapshots, movers tables from events.
  3. Model weekly gained/lost/net rollups and a source-DR bucket for each gained domain to make quality visible, not just volume.
  4. Assemble the cards with a domain filter, defaulting to your domain with competitors overlaid on the comparison chart.

Example card SQL

New vs. lost referring domains by weekPostgreSQL
SELECT
  date_trunc('week', stat_date) AS week,
  COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE change_type = 'gained') AS gained,
  COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE change_type = 'lost') AS lost,
  COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE change_type = 'gained')
    - COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE change_type = 'lost') AS net_new
FROM ahrefs_backlink_changes
WHERE target_domain = 'yourdomain.com'
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1;
Domain rating and referring-domain trend with 7-day velocityPostgreSQL
SELECT
  stat_date,
  domain_rating,
  referring_domains,
  referring_domains - LAG(referring_domains, 7)
    OVER (ORDER BY stat_date) AS net_referring_domains_7d
FROM ahrefs_authority_daily
WHERE target_domain = 'yourdomain.com'
ORDER BY stat_date;

Metrics

Domain ratingReferring domainsBacklink velocity

Integrations

Ahrefs + MetabaseSemrush + MetabaseSE Ranking + Metabase

Dashboards

Organic visibility overviewCompetitor share of voice

FAQ

Why count referring domains instead of backlinks?
Because backlink counts are dominated by noise: one sitewide footer link creates thousands of backlinks from a single site overnight, and one spammy scraper network can add tens of thousands. Referring domains count each linking site once, which is much closer to how search engines weigh authority. Keep total backlinks as a secondary column if you like, but every trend and velocity card on this dashboard should count domains.
Can Ahrefs DR be compared with Semrush Authority Score?
No — each vendor's score is computed from its own index with its own formula and scale, so a DR of 55 in Ahrefs and an Authority Score of 55 in Semrush are different facts about different databases. Scores are only comparable within one vendor: your domain rating over time, or your DR against a competitor's DR. If you sync from multiple tools, keep their scores in separate columns and never chart them on one axis.
A spike in lost links appeared — did something break?
Probably not. Most lost-link spikes are index events, not real losses: the vendor recrawled a slow corner of the web, dropped dead pages from its index, or a large site restructured. Before escalating, check the lost_reason column (crawl errors and "page dropped from index" are benign), whether the lost domains ever sent traffic, and whether referring-domain totals recovered within a couple of weeks. Real link losses worth acting on are usually specific: a partner removed a link, or a page you were cited on was deleted.
What is backlink velocity and what should it be?
The rate of net new referring domains per week or month — the backlink velocity metric. There is no universal healthy number: what matters is the trend relative to your own baseline and to competitors acquiring links in the same niche. A useful reading: flat velocity while a competitor accelerates predicts a rankings gap months before it shows up in the visibility dashboard, because links lead rankings.
How do competitors fit on this dashboard?
Track their domains in the same sync: the Ahrefs API serves domain rating and referring-domain counts for any domain, so ahrefs_authority_daily can hold one row per domain per day for you and your named competitors. That enables the comparison card — referring-domain growth curves on one chart — and feeds the wider competitor share of voice dashboard. Budget API units accordingly: each tracked domain multiplies the daily pull.