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What tool to use to check incoming backlinks?

by J smith
14 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi warriors,

I've been out of the SEO game for a bit (ok, quite a bit lol) So, what yahho's site explorer gone, what tools do people use to check incoming backlinks, for your site as well as your competitor's sites?

I did a quick google search but the ones I've found seem at best sub par, my site with hundreds of back links shows up as 0 links in most of them. The one at Bulk Backlink Checker - Majestic SEO seems decent as it at least shows number of links, ip diversity etc. Doesn't show where the links are actually coming from though (at least not the free version)

Obviously being able to check your competition's backlinks is an important part of determining how hard it will be to rank for a given keyword.
So I'd appreciate if you guys could share what programs (preferably free) you use to check for backlinks.
#backlinks #check #incoming #tool
  • Profile picture of the author JSProjects
    Traffic Travis is a decent free option. And SEO Spyglass is one of the better paid options.

    Truth is, though, ever since the demise of Yahoo Site Explorer, backlink research has become a LOT more difficult.
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  • Profile picture of the author TheProgrammer
    Try ahrefs or ibacklinkpro. they have also free option.
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  • Profile picture of the author J smith
    Ok, I'll give those a try. Btw, was there an actual reason yahoo killed thier site explorer? That was such a nice tool to use for seo research.
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  • Profile picture of the author retsek
    As it stands right now, Majestic offers the most complete dataset for most competitive checks.

    For your own sites, using Google's Webmaster Tools will give you a clearer picture of No. of incoming domains, etc

    Bing's Link Explorer was recently launched as a replacement for Yahoo Site Explorer. It doesn't yet display alot of data, but Bing Webmaster Tools has some really great features. Highly recommend using it.

    Open Site Explorer by Seomoz. Even with 18m in funding, they can't deliver a proper index and keep coming up with excuses. I am seriously considering cancelling the $99 per month. Their index dropped from 150b to around 70b. The latest index has weird anchor text issues and their data is always STALE - it's always about a 1 - 2 months behind. The only redeeming quality is their metrics, and that's the only reason I haven't yet cancelled the $99/month fee ..but i'm just about out of patience.

    Ahrefs... I love their interface and tools. They have good freshness, but they need to bring up their index size.
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  • Profile picture of the author Clint Faber
    Here is something that has changed over time due to the influx of people understanding the quality and quantity of back links affecting their sites ranking.

    Things have changed over time in such a way that it is very unreliable to have a third-party inform you whether or not you have quality back links number of back links and site truck even directly from the search engines themselves.

    There are many reasons why this could be happening but we know for sure that they are not accurately displaying the number of back links that they have in their database. We are able to come to this conclusion by reverse engineering the results that we're obtaining through isolated back linking tests.

    So in summary search engines like Google are indexing and using back links that they have in their database to evaluate your ranking. Before he even displaying the fact that they have it crawled. So based on this information, make sure that you keep track of the location of each back link to add up for yourself as well as looking at the results you are getting in the rankings.
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  • Profile picture of the author RedClickSeo
    I would definitely go with AHREFS.

    They have the best results that ive found when comparing majesticseo, opensiteexplorer, and some of the lesser ones.

    Google webmaster tools is also pretty kickass, but there are arguments that using it could hurt overall ranking if you have any "questionable" links.

    Overall, def go with ahrefs, but why not use all in conjunction? Most offer free plans.
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  • Profile picture of the author Annie15
    I also use ahrefs. It shows good results.
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  • Profile picture of the author prcys
    Banned
    I won't make use of any of the tool, but instead of that i would like to make the search for the competitor's links in google. As by generating the query links : competitor's domain, i would like to know about the backlinks.
    And you can set google alert also for the particular site to notice the changes or to know about the links the other site receive.
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  • Profile picture of the author Stuart william
    You can try a href or Backlink Checker, Yahoo Site Explorer Alternative Tool 2012 both are good backlink checker. You can generate backlinks report by using second website.
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  • Profile picture of the author urjasmine
    I think we can check from the webmaster tool..............
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  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    Paid option - ahrefs or majestic (although I can only vouch for having used a paid version of ahrefs)
    Free option - Bings Webmaster tools (Link explorer)
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    • Profile picture of the author rajivwebads
      Backlink Checker Tool is the best tool to be used for checking incoming backlinks on own website.
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      Email - johnbetum [AT] gmail [Dot] com
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  • Profile picture of the author gPlayer
    I use SEOSpyglass to check backlinks.
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