Cape Cod SEO has a great post about Evaluating Inbound Link Results in Search Engines. The article explains using the link: option in the search engines to find and count inbound links to your website. The also explain the differents results from different search engines.I would call this technique the "sheeple method" as it is what everyone else is doing. So many infact that the Cape Cod SEO blog says that MSN search disabled it completly and Google doesn't provide accurate or complete results. What's the point?
I propose there is a much better method. That is your log files! Now I can hear the arguments, first it only counts links that have actually been clicked. True enough. However, what is really the value of a link that is never clicked? Second there is plenty of referral spam. Sure enough but that is easily resolved.
Here is my suggestion for accurately tracking inbound links. It is certainly not as easy as typing "link: blah blah" into a search engine. However, I believe the effort is well worth the results. You will not be following in the path of your fellow sheeple.
First you will need to create a database to track your inbound links. You will need to decide the fields you want to keep. Maybe the link, a count, the domain, first date received hit, date of most recent hit, flag link found or not, flag no follow, date previewed link. You may want to keep additional information as well.
Secondly you will add/update the information in your inbound link database from your logfiles. You could do this daily, weekly, monthly or anytime you like. You'll want to have some filters so you don't add all the search engine referrals or other obvious junk.
After the database has been updated from the log files you then need a script that reads the "inbound link pages". This is important because there is plenty of referral spams and nofollow links. Since each referral link is stored just once in your database, you script will only be bothered by the referral spam once and you don't personally be bothered with it.
The script which reads the inbound link pages will update your database flagging whether there is actually a link and whether it is nofollowed.
Now your database contains an accurate list of inbound links, verified and flagged as nofollow or not. You could review the pages manually if you like to see the links first hand, or prepare whatever various reports you link.
Of course this won't show the few links that have been resulted in a hit to your site. However, I question whether these have any usefulness. For example site A has a link to your site and after six months has never produced a hit. Do you seriously entertain the notion this is having a siginficant effect in the search engines?
I realize you wanted me to tell you exactly how to accomplish this as easily as typeing link: blah blah. Sorry, if you want that type of help you need to line up with the sheep.
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