MCP server for Common Crawl CDX — backlink discovery, expired domain finder, competitor gap analysis
All 4 tools have schemas and descriptions, but quality is inconsistent. Tool names lack action verbs (discover_backlinks, find_expired, check_domain, competitor_gap are acceptable but not ideal). Descriptions are present (avg ~150 chars) but lack WHEN/WHY guidance. Parameters have types and descriptions, but lack constraints (enums, ranges, patterns). Output schemas are not documented, responses are JSON blobs without field definitions. Error handling is minimal (try/catch with silent failures). No tool annotations (readOnlyHint, idempotentHint). The code shows silent error suppression (catch {} blocks) which prevents LLMs from understanding failure modes.
Deep check a single domain — liveness, parked page detection, Common Crawl page count, last seen date.
Find domains linking to competitors but not to you. Queries Common Crawl for backlinks to each competitor, diffs against your domain.
Discover backlinks to a domain using Common Crawl CDX API (3 indexes). Returns source URLs, anchor text, link context. Free alternative to Ahrefs/Semrush backlink API.
Find expired or parked domains in a niche using Common Crawl. Searches CC CDX for domains matching keywords, checks liveness. Returns domain status (expired/parked/live).
No output schemas documented. Tools return JSON text blobs without field definitions. LLMs cannot plan downstream calls or extract structured data reliably.
Silent error suppression throughout (catch {} blocks). Errors are swallowed without returning actionable guidance to the LLM. No error classification (retryable vs fatal).
Parameters lack constraints. 'limit' is unbounded (no min/max). 'keywords' array has no length limit. 'competitors' array claims 'max 5' in description but not enforced in schema.
Descriptions lack WHEN/WHY context. 'Discover backlinks' tells WHAT but not WHEN to use it vs other tools or when it's appropriate. No dependency hints (e.g., 'Call this first to validate domain exists').
| Scored | Grade | Overall | Spec posture | Rubric |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-23 | D | 58 | 2026-07-28+ | v2 |
No tool annotations. Tools lack readOnlyHint (all are read-only), idempotentHint (all are idempotent). LLMs cannot infer safety properties.