Spot PBN clusters without disavowing your real authority signals.

It pulls a sample of your top referring domains, groups them by operator signature (shared template, hosting, outbound link profile, anchor pattern, link velocity) and flags clusters of 5+ that look like PBN networks. Unlike generic backlink tools, the Crawlux check explicitly recognizes Web3 authority sources (DefiLlama, CoinGecko, Etherscan, GitHub, audit firms) and does not flag them as low-quality even when they look that way to generic Domain Rating models.

Generic backlink tools (Ahrefs DR, Semrush AS) trained on the open web score crypto authority sources lower than they should. DefiLlama, CoinGecko, Etherscan and audit firm reports get treated as moderate-quality referrers when they are actually some of the strongest signals a Web3 protocol can have. Sites following generic tool disavow recommendations have ended up disavowing the very links AI search uses to verify them. The Web3 Backlink Toxicity Rubric is calibrated to avoid that mistake.

Yes. The basic check (top 100 referring domains sampled) is free, no signup required. We rate-limit per IP. The full Backlink Toxicity audit module covers your entire backlink profile with disavow file generation ready for Search Console; the free check covers the highest-impact subset.

A PBN (Private Blog Network) cluster is a network of sites operated by the same entity to manipulate backlink signals. Markers include: identical or near-identical templates, shared hosting on the same /24 IP block, near-identical outbound link profiles to other crypto sites, links published within a short time window and anchor text patterns that repeat across the network. The Crawlux check identifies clusters and recommends disavowing at the cluster level rather than per-link.

The free check shows the cluster verdict with reasoning. The full audit module generates a Search Console-ready disavow.txt file with cluster-level entries and per-link entries for outliers, with a # reason comment per entry so future audits can re-evaluate decisions. The free check is for diagnosis; the full module produces the deliverable.

Yes. The check accepts any public domain. Running it on competitors gives you a read on whether they have toxic backlinks pulling them down or strong authority signals lifting them up. The full Crawlux audit benchmarks this side-by-side automatically against the top 20 sites in your category.

Ahrefs Site Audit gives you DR per referring domain and surfaces a generic toxicity score. Crawlux gives you the same backlink data plus the Web3 Backlink Toxicity Rubric, which scores each link in crypto context. Crawlux explicitly recognizes DefiLlama, CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, Etherscan, GitHub and audit firm domains as authority sources rather than treating them as generic referrers.

Cluster size is the number of distinct referring domains sharing a common operator signature. A cluster of 5+ is the threshold for clear PBN classification. Clusters of 2-4 may be coincidence (shared host, similar template) and require manual review. Clusters of 20+ are almost always operator-controlled networks and should be disavowed at the cluster level rather than per-domain.