Subnet Diversity measures how widely a page’s referring sources are spread across distinct network subnets, giving one view of whether links come from genuinely independent hosts or cluster on the same networks.
| Term | Subnet Diversity |
|---|---|
| Category | Entities, Links and Authority |
| Also known as | Class C Diversity, Network Diversity |
| Where it appears | Off-page factors |
What it means in RankGear
RankGear surfaces Subnet Diversity among the off-page factors it pulls from an enabled backlink provider. Rather than counting raw referring domains, it looks at the subnet each linking host sits on and reports how many separate subnets are represented. Two hundred links from the same handful of subnets is a narrower footprint than two hundred links spread across many; the diversity figure is what tells those two profiles apart. It sits alongside related link-source signals such as IP diversity and referring-domain counts so you can read a backlink profile by its spread, not just its size.
How to interpret it
Read Subnet Diversity as a comparative indicator of source independence, not a quality score. A wider spread of subnets generally suggests links accrued from unrelated sites; a value that stays low while referring-domain counts climb can point to many domains sharing the same networks, which is a weaker signal of independence. Keep the provider’s availability separate from the measured value, and only compare figures between pages analysed under the same run conditions and the same provider, since each provider indexes the web differently.
| Wide spread across many subnets | Links likely come from independent hosts on unrelated networks |
|---|---|
| Many domains, few subnets | Referring domains may share networks; source independence is weaker than the domain count implies |
Example
Suppose you are comparing two pages that both report about 150 referring domains. In RankGear’s off-page factors, the first shows links landing across roughly 120 distinct subnets, while the second concentrates on around 30. The second page’s backlinks lean on a smaller set of shared networks, so its diversity reads lower even though the referring-domain totals match. That contrast is the kind of thing Subnet Diversity is built to expose in the comparison sheet.
Important considerations
- Subnet Diversity depends on an enabled backlink provider; if none is active, the factor has no value to report.
- Provider metrics use their own indexes and scales. They are comparative indicators, not Google scores, and a higher diversity figure does not by itself make a page rank.
- Correlation is not causation: a wide subnet spread reflects how links were acquired, but it does not prove the links caused any ranking outcome.
- Compare only like with like, between pages measured under the same provider and run conditions, since subnet definitions and coverage vary by provider.
Related terms
Part of the RankGear glossary · how RankGear measures · the 870 factors.