the 34 domains that link to every major ai writing tool

we have run this overlap analysis on two categories now. project management tools had 35 domains that link to all eight; website builders had 27. ai writing tools land at 34, and they are the cleanest overlap we have measured yet. but the universal linkers are a brand new crowd, and reading the list hands a founder the playbook outright.

how we pulled this

eight tools: jasper, copy.ai, writesonic, quillbot, rytr, wordtune, anyword, and sudowrite. for each one we pulled its top referring domains ranked by cg_authority from the common crawl webgraph, then intersected the eight lists. here are the headline numbers.

backlink overlap is a pyramid (again)

across the eight tools there were 9,466 unique linking domains, and the shape is almost identical to the two categories before it:

69 percent of linking domains link to only one of the eight tools. only 34 non-platform domains link to all eight. and the overlap here is the cleanest of any category we have tested: among domains linking to four or more tools, 99 percent are real editorial sites, with only 1 percent platform noise. two prior categories sat at 98 percent; this one is tighter still. same structure, even less junk.

the 34 domains that link to all eight

here is the thin top of the pyramid, the domains that link to every one of the eight ai writing tools, by authority:

domains linking to ALL 8 ai writing tools, by cg authority:

github.com          81     substack.com        75
semrush.com         60     beehiiv.com         58
clickup.com         58     copyblogger.com     57
geekflare.com       55     wondershare.com     54
spocket.co          53     notta.ai            53
analyticsvidhya     51     engagebay.com       50
webrazzi.com        48     entireweb.com       48
webcatalog.io       46     blaze.today         45
undetectable.ai     44     colossyan.com       44
lindy.ai            40     maestra.ai          37
seowind.io          34     seo.ai              30
elephas.app         30     nealschaffer.com    30

34 domains link to all eight.

a different category, a very different playbook

for project management tools the universal linkers were integration hubs and product communities. for website builders they were the design press and .edu courses. for ai writing tools they are something else again, and reading the list tells a founder exactly where the links concentrate:

ai-tool directories and listicle sites (webcatalog.io, geekflare, notta.ai, undetectable.ai, lindy.ai, maestra.ai, elephas.app, seo.ai, blaze.today). this is the dominant cluster, and it barely existed in the older categories. ai and seo content media plus influencers (copyblogger, semrush, analyticsvidhya, nealschaffer) who publish the "best ai writing tools" roundups. other ai tools cross-linking, the most striking pattern of all: a wall of .ai domains that link to all eight. the ai ecosystem links to itself.

so the playbook for an ai writing tool is not what it was for the prior two categories. it is not the design press and it is not .edu courses. it is this: get listed in the ai-tool directories, and get into the "best ai writing tools 2026" roundups. that is where this category's links pool, far more than traditional press. the overlap is not guessing for you, it is naming the exact sites.

the spicy part: authority is low across the board

look back at the headline table. copy.ai has 10,127 referring domains but a cg authority of only 30. anyword sits at 30 too. jasper leads the whole category at just 54, a number that would be middling for a website builder. this is a young category, and link volume has not yet turned into authority anywhere in it.

how to do this for your own niche

the newcomer proof holds here too. sudowrite has 1,445 referring domains and anyword 1,816, a fraction of jasper's 14,859, yet both sit on the same all-eight list, reached by the same universal linkers. you do not need to match the leader on link volume. you need the few dozen directories and roundup sites that link to your category as a habit, and that gap is short and specific, not an ocean.

the method is category-agnostic. pick your two or three closest competitors, pull their referring domains, and keep the ones that link to several of them but not to you, sorted by overlap and then authority. that is exactly what a backlink gap analysis does, and you can run it free on the same common crawl data we used here. enter your domain plus a few competitors and you get the ranked, noise-filtered overlap in seconds. the free tier shows your top gaps; the lifetime plan ($99, one time) unlocks the full list, csv export, and an api.