If you want to measure the "link popularity" of your Web site against similar ones in the same "industry" there is nothing better than the online Link Popularity Check tools by various companies. This free online facility allows you to input the URL of your Web site while providing you back with a precise report of the total number of inbound links as measured across all of the major search engines. You can compare your site with lots of personally selected competitors in addition to pre-selected list of the popular destinations on the Web. Measuring link popularity is important to know before attempting to submit to search engines. Track down your referral links from by using search engines. This method will give you an idea of how "popular" a search engine believes your web site is to them. That's important for those search engines that rank sites in part by the site's link popularity. Some sites are Google, AOL Search, HotBot, IWon, MSN Search, LookSmart, Inktomi, Alta Vista, and Northern Light.
1. AltaVista: In order to find out the number of sites linking to the domain mysite.com in AltaVista, you would type in link: mysite.com in AltaVista's search box. If you wish to
exclude links from pages within the mysite.com domain, you would type in link: mysite.com - URL: mysite.com.
If you want to find out how many sites are linking to a particular page (say mypage.html) in the mysite.com domain, you would type in link:mysite.com/mypage.html. Again, in order to exclude links from pages within the mysite.com domain, you would type in
link:mysite.com/mypage.html - URL: mysite.com. Note that you should not type in the "www" or the "http://" prefixes.
2. AOL: AOL is a directory based engine. It takes its results from the Open Directory. Hence, the concept of link popularity is not very meaningful in AOL.
3. Direct Hit: There is no way you can find out the link popularity of your site in Direct Hit. This is because Direct Hit does not return the number of sites which match the search
criterion.
4. Excite: There is no way you can find out the link popularity of your site in Excite. This is because Excite does not have a special command to measure the link popularity of your site. 5. Fast (www.alltheweb.com): In order to find out the number of web sites linking to the domain mysite.com in Fast, click on the Advanced Search link. In the "Word Filters" section of the Advanced Search page, select "Must Include" from the first combo box. In the text box besides the first combo box, type in mysite.com. In the combo box to the right of the text box, select "in the link name". If you want to exclude links from pages within the mysite.com domain, type in mysite.com in the "Exclude" text box in the "Domain Filters" section. Then, click on the "FAST Search" button.
In order to find the number of links to mypage.html in the mysite.com domain, you would type in mysite.com/mypage.html in the text box besides the first combo box. Again, in order to exclude links from within the mysite.com domain, type in mysite.com in the "Exclude" text box. Note that you should not type in the "www" or the "http://" prefixes.
6. Google: In order to find out the number of sites linking to mysite.com in Google, you would type in link: mysite.com.
If you want to find out how many sites are linking to the page mypage.html in the mysite.com domain, you would type in link:mysite.com/mypage.html.
However, there is no way you can exclude links from pages within the mysite.com domain from being counted.
Google considers www.mysite.com to be different from mysite.com. This means that typing in link: mysite.com will not include the links to www.mysite.com. If you want to find out the number of links to www.mysite.com, you have to type in link: www.mysite.com. And typing in link: www.mysite.com will not include the links to mysite.com either.
This is in contrast to AltaVista which includes links to the www.mysite.com domain when you try to find the number of links to mysite.com.
7. HotBot: There are two methods of measuring link popularity in Hotbot.
In the first case, in order to find out the number of sites linking to mysite.com, you can type in linkdomain: mysite.com. In order to exclude links from pages within the mysite.com domain, you can use linkdomain: mysite.com - domain: mysite.com.
Make sure that you do not use the "www" or "http://" prefixes when you use this method. However, this method cannot be used to find out the number of links to specific pages in your site, i.e. you cannot use this method to find out the links to the page mypage.html in the
domain mysite.com.
In order to find out the number of links to specific pages, choose "links to this URL" from the "Look for:" drop-down combo box and then type in the complete URL (i.e.
http://www.mysite.com/mypage.html) in the search box. In order to exclude links from within the mysite.com domain, type http://www.mysite.com/mypage.html -domain: mysite.com in the search box after choosing "links to this URL" from the combo box. Note that for the second method, you need to use the "http://" prefix.
Lastly, you should note that in the second method, typing http://www.mysite.com will only find links to the home page of the www.mysite.com domain. If there are some sites which have linked to some of the internal pages in your site rather than your home page, this will not be included in the link popularity count.
8. IWon: The method of measuring link popularity in IWon is the same as the first method in HotBot. However, unlike HotBot, IWon does not have an alternative method which can be used to measure the number of links to specific pages in a domain.
9. Lycos: In order to measure link popularity in Lycos, first click on the Advanced Search link to the right of the search box. To find out the number of sites linking to mysite.com in Lycos, you would type in ml: mysite.com in the search box. If you wish to exclude links from pages within the mysite.com domain, you would type in ml: mysite.com -h: mysite.com. If you want to find out how many sites are linking to a particular page (say mypage.html) in the
mysite.com domain, you would type in ml:mysite.com/mypage.html. Again, in order to exclude links from pages within the mysite.com domain, you would type in
ml:mysite.com/mypage.html -h: mysite.com.
Note that you should not type in the "www" or the "http://" prefixes.
10. MSN: The method of measuring link popularity in MSN is almost the same as that in Hotbot. The first method is exactly the same. For the second method, click on the More
Options tab, type in the complete URL in the "Search the web for:" text box and choose "links to URL" from the "Find:" drop-down combo box. However, unlike Hotbot, you cannot
eliminate links from pages within the same domain using the second method.
Note that the More Options tab is displayed only after you search for something in MSN. It is not displayed in MSN's home page.
11. Netscape: Netscape is a directory based engine. It takes its results from the Open
Directory. If no results are found in the Open Directory, it takes its results from Google. Since it is a directory based engine, the concept of measuring link popularity is not all that
meaningful. You can type in link: mysite.com to measure the number of links to the domain mysite.com. In this case, Netscape will simply take its results from Google.
12. Northern Light: There is no special command for measuring link popularity in Northern Light. To get a very approximate idea of the number of sites linking to the domain
mysite.com, you can type in mysite.com. In order to eliminate the references to the
mysite.com domain from within the domain, you can type in mysite.com - URL: mysite.com. To get an approximate measure of the number of links to the page mypage.html in the domain mysite.com, you can type in mysite.com/mypage.html in the search box. Again, to eliminate the references to the page from within the mysite.com domain, you would type
13. WebCrawler: There is no way you can find out the link popularity of your site in WebCrawler. This is because, like Excite, WebCrawler has no special command for measuring link popularity.
Other than search engines, there are numerous tools available in the market for measuring link popularity. But there are flaws in link popularity measurement.
• To appear in link popularity results, the site upon which the link sits must have been indexed by search engines. But search engines still index only a fraction of all the web pages available. If your link sits on this ‘invisible web’, it won’t be returned.
• Even if the site on which your link sits has been indexed, there are still problems. First, if the link was added since the site was last indexed then it won’t show up. And second, if your link is buried deep within the site, it may not appear.
• Sites with restricted access or membership only areas - often sources of rich information and links - will not be accessible to search engines.
• Many link popularity tests return internal links - links from within the site itself. This shows that the content has been well-structured and optimized for search engines, but it does distort the scores on link popularity. AltaVista, for one overcomes this with the command - link: www.yoursite.com -URL: www.yoursite.com.
• Search results can be inconsistent. This is because different searches may be carried out on different indexes. As Craig Silverstein of Google writes, "There are many reasons why one might see a difference in the estimated number of pages returned for the same query. It’s most likely the queries ... were sent to different Google datacenters. Depending on which datacenter finishes a query, the estimated number of results may vary."
Link popularity checkers are very useful as a guide and for research purposes they can be tremendous. However, using them as a metric to judge the effectiveness of your linking work should be treated with caution.
By all means use them to give you a rough idea, but build some solid metrics into each linking project you undertake.
Here are some things you should think about:
• Analyze the type and quality of the links that currently exist. Look for any information you can use to measure effectiveness.
• Identify the top 20, the top 50 or the top 100 sites that you would like to link to you. How many of these currently link to your site? Use that as a benchmark - so if 20 of the top 100 sites currently link to you, set yourself a target of 40.
• Check your referrer logs frequently and keep a note of referring URLs. Note: URLs drive most traffic to your site.
Measuring return on investment is a key business discipline that we all have to address. Putting some thought into what you should measure for each individual linking project will not only prove your worth, but will give you valuable insights into how you can sharpen and improve your linking strategy.