What "similar websites" means here
Most similar-site tools match websites by audience: people who visit one site also visit another. This finder matches them by Google searches. It lists the sites that rank in Google for the same keywords as the site you enter, ordered by how many searches they share.
That makes the list useful for SEO and link building. A site that ranks for your searches writes for the people you want to reach, and Google already treats it as relevant to your topic. A link from it, a guest post on it or a mention in one of its articles reaches readers who are already looking for what you sell.
How the similar websites finder works
- Shared searches. We look up the domains that rank in Google's organic results for the same keywords as your site, in the market you choose (one lookup per search).
- Filter. We remove your own site and its subdomains, the world's largest websites, and platforms where no editor decides what gets published, such as Reddit, YouTube, Medium or Pinterest. Sites that share only one or two keywords are dropped as coincidences.
- Open each homepage. We load the homepage of the top 20 sites to show their name and description, and look for a link to a blog or a "write for us" page.
- Sort. Sites that link a contributor page come first, then sites with a blog, then everything else. Sites that blocked our visit are folded away below, still listed.
Each result shows how many Google keywords the site shares with yours, the share of your own keywords that represents, and an estimate of its monthly visits from search.
Three ways to use the list for link building
Pitch the sites that publish. A similar site with a blog writes about your topics for your readers. Read a few recent posts, then pitch one specific idea those readers would search for. If it links a contributor page, read the guidelines first and follow them exactly. For SaaS, our guide to guest posting for SaaS walks through choosing and pitching, and the guest post outreach template gives you a short first email.
Study the sites that compete with you. A similar site that sells what you sell won't link to you. But the sites that link to it often cover businesses like yours: review roundups, resource pages, local guides, partner pages. Run a competitor through the competitor backlink gap tool to see where its links come from.
Grow the list from a site you like. Enter a site that already links to you, or one you'd love a link from, instead of your own. Its neighbours are often sites of the same kind: other magazines, other blogs in the niche, other directories. When you find a page worth a pitch, the author contact finder shows who wrote it.
Whichever you pick, judge each site before you write. Check that it publishes recently, that its articles are written for people rather than for search engines, and that a link from it would make sense to its readers. Our guide to finding backlink opportunities covers what makes a page worth pitching.
Limits of the data
This is a list of sites that share Google rankings, not a full map of your niche. It reads the top 50 competing domains from a commercial search index, keeps the relevant ones and opens up to 20 homepages. Rankings come from a regularly refreshed sample of Google results, so very new sites and very recent changes can be missing.
Similar by search does not always mean similar in business. A site can share your keywords because it explains a topic your product solves, sells a rival product, or writes news about your industry. The homepage name and description help you tell them apart, but open each site before you reach out.
Results are kept for a day, so running the same site and market again shows the same list.
From one list to a steady stream
A list of similar sites is the start of prospecting. Each site still needs a page worth a link, the right person to write to, and an email they want to answer. Mentiohunt does that part every day for your site: it finds specific pages on sites like these, finds who to write to, drafts the outreach and sends it until a prospect replies. From the first reply on, you write to them yourself. The free opportunity preview shows a few real opportunities for your site and sends no outreach. Links are never guaranteed: a site owner always decides.