HOME    INVENTORY    ADVERTISERS    LINKS & RESOURCES    BENEFITS    CONTACT US

Measuring Link Popularity

By Danny Sullivan , Editor, Search Engine Watch
October 26, 2001

The best way to discover how people are finding your web site is to analyze your site's activity logs, a topic which is covered in depth on the Keywords Used To Find Your Web Site page available to Search Engine Watch members .

Those unable to analyze their logs can instead use search engines to track down referral links. In particular, this method gives you an idea of how "popular" a search engine believes your site to be. That's important for those search engines that rank sites in part by the site's link popularity.

Below is described how to measure link popularity at popular crawler-based search engines.

Be aware that "popularity" is only one part of the link analysis systems that search engines such as Google use to rank web pages. The quality and context of links is also taken into account, rather than sheer numbers.

AltaVista, Google & Northern Light

To search for pages linking to your site, simply enter your domain this way:

link:searchenginewatch.com

This will return all pages that have hyperlinks linking to the searchenginewatch.com web site. This would include links such as:

http://searchenginewatch.com
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/popularity.html

You can narrow the search to a particular URL by being more specific. For example:

link:searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/popularity.html

Some pages from within your site probably link to each other. To eliminate these, use the -url command (see the Checking Your Listings page for more about this command), such as:

link:searchenginewatch.com -url:searchenginewatch.com

This only works at AltaVista and Northern Light. There's no way to count links to a page and also simultaneously subtract links from within your own site to a page with Google.

Note that the URLs entered after link: don't include the www prefix. It's not necessary. The format shown will find links with or without the prefix. The http:// prefix is not necessary, either.

AllTheWeb.com

To search for pages linking to your URLs, use the link.all: command, such as:

link.all:searchenginewatch.com

Inktomi

Inktomi has a linkdomain: command that can be used to measure link popularity within its listings. However, because different Inktomi-partners may not implement this command correctly, you may find it doesn't always work in places where Inktomi results are used. How it works for major Inktomi partners is covered below.

To find all the pages linking to a particular domain, use use linkdomain:, such as:

linkdomain:searchenginewatch.com

To eliminate your own pages, use -domain (see the Checking Your Listings page for more about this command), such as:

linkdomain:searchenginewatch.com -domain:searchenginewatch.com

The command works above as shown for Inktomi results at:

  • AOL Search
  • HotBot
  • iWon
  • MSN Search

It does not work properly at LookSmart, because LookSmart will fail to show the entire count of links to a particular domain. Instead, it will max out at 1,000.

The linkdomain: command only works to measure the link popularity within an entire web site. In contrast, if you need to find just the links to a particular page, you'll need to use the advanced search pages offered by HotBot and MSN Search. Enter the full URL you wish to locate, including the http:// prefix. Then look for the "links to URL" or similar option. Conduct the search, and you'll be shown the links to that particular page.

Other Resources

Marketleap Visibility Index
http://linkpop.marketleap.com

Enter your URL, along with up to three comparison URLs, then see at a glance how you measure up in terms of sheer numbers of links to some major sites on the web. Free, easy to understand and use! You can then click on the report to see link count listings from the major search engines that are queried.

Link Popularity Check
http://www.linkpopularitycheck.com

Enter your URL, along with up to three comparison URLs, then see with bar charts how these particular sites compare to each other. You can also see the link count listings from the major search engines that are queried. Free, easy to use and you can have results emailed to you on a regular basis.

LinkPopularity
http://www.linkpopularity.com/

Free and simple service that helps you generate link lists from three major search engines. Results can also be emailed each month.

Compute Your Own Web Traffic Rank
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/relativeranking.html

This isn't really about measuring link popularity, but it is an interesting method of determining the overall popularity of your site. In short, Jakob Nielsen explains that dividing your site's page views by the page views of the web's most popular site tells you how popular your site is.

Counting Clicks and Looking at Links
The Search Engine Report, Aug. 4, 1998

Discusses how link popularity is used at some major search engines and some experimental ones.

 

 

 

 
Managing content with Contribute
Are you paying a web firm to make minor text and graphic edits to your website? If you know how to use a web browser and Microsoft Word, we can show you how you can edit your own web pages safely and securely. For less than $250, including software, you can be editing your own content without having to hire it out. Contact Tripcony Consulting today, and we'll show you how easy it can be to edit your own website!

Search engine marketing
The web changes every day. About seven to ten years ago, the saying, "If you build it, they will come" was true. Today, that is not the case. New websites appear on the Internet every day. With millions of websites on the web, what makes you think you will get traffic to your website?

We can help. It takes an ongoing effort to build website traffic. Content must be updated periodically, and the site needs to be submitted to the search engines. To maximize your traffic, you need to be listed with the primary search engines as well as links from reputable sites pointing to your website. To optimize your site for the search engines, you need keyword-rich metatags and your text should be written in a manner that is interesting to readers while targetting specific keywords in the copy as well.

Beyond organic search engine marketing, an even faster route to traffic involves managing pay per click campaigns with companies such as Overture and Google. With Tripcony Consulting's help, you can start seeing new traffic on your website immediately with Google Adwords. Let us help you select your targeted keywords and set up your Google Adwords account today.

Online forms made easy
You use paper forms every day in your daily operations. Have you ever thought about putting those forms on the web? Do you think it could make your job or the jobs of your staff easier or more productive? Instead of having to decipher handwriting and faxed forms, send clients to your website and let them enter the data you need. Our online forms methodology allows for data to be stored online for future use as well as emailed to the proper staff members or email accounts.

Tripcony Consulting can help automate your data collection and report generation. Putting a form online does not have to be a huge project. Neither does it have to be expensive. We offer hosted form accounts for reasonable prices. If you have a webhost that supports ASP and Access or SQL, we can install a forms processor on your site for you.

HOME    INVENTORY    ADVERTISERS    LINKS & RESOURCES    BENEFITS    CONTACT US