Backlink Checkers that Actually Help

April 21st, 2008 by Ann Smarty | 14 Comments

What do I usually want to see in a good tool? Contrary to what you might think, I never expect a tool to do part of my job or give me some information I would be unable to find without it. The most important thing I usually look for is a convenient way to represent the data.

There are plenty of backlink checkers online that do nothing more than export the data from Yahoo SiteExplorer or Google. There are still a few ones that offer information in a way that helps you categorize and organize it more effectively.

1. LinkHounds Yahoo Backlink Information sorts results based on the IP address, thus showing only unique IP/domain backlinks. The tool allows to exclude any domain from the results and set the query depth. For each individual result you will also see useful quick links to:

whois data;
site web archive;
Google cache;
exact pages where the backlink was found as indexed by Yahoo.

LinkHounds Yahoo Backlink Information

2. Domain Backlinks Checker sorts the results based on the first- and second-level domains. The tool offers the information in a very convenient way linking to each page from the certain domain where the backlink was found.

Domain Backlinks Checker

3. Link Diagnosis tool is the best at representing information offering the wide variety of sorting options based on:

link type (nofollow, missing, good);
link anchor text;
PageRank;
page internal+external links.

It also offers a helpful export option and calculates link power for every internal page of the site.

Link Diagnosis

To cut the long story short, here is a quick outline:

Tool	Searching for	Sorting by
LinkHounds	links to domain; links to a page; only deep links	IP address
Domain BC	links to domain; links to a page;	top- and second-level domain
LinkDiagnosis	links to domain	link type; link anchor text; PageRank; page internal+external links.

Comments

14 responses so far ↓

Mercy on Apr 21, 2008 at 7:43 am

I am already using link diagnosis firefox extension. Link hounds is looking wonderful though, Thanks Ann again!
David on Apr 21, 2008 at 10:39 am

Another great article by Ann Smarty. I didn’t know about the link diagnosis tool, looks like a great find to me. Many thanks!
SEO Best Practices Guide on Apr 21, 2008 at 11:27 am

Hi Ann, thanks for the great information. Do you have an excel sheet format where you collect the most important information when doing link inventory for competitors?

Do you know of this tool: SEO Spyglass? Is it worth buying it?

Thanks in advance Ann.

Gus.
Oliver Taco on Apr 21, 2008 at 2:12 pm

Good to find the backlinks, good also to make sure they’re pinged properly.

We built a technorati/ping-o-matic backlink pinger (follow the url) built on iMacro.

Free!
Raghavan on Apr 22, 2008 at 2:16 am

Great post again
zoekmachine optimalisatie on Apr 22, 2008 at 9:11 am

Thanx for te good tools!
I didn’t know linkhounds and i like it a lot.
But the best tool is google webmastercentral with the plug in from joost de valk.
Ann Smarty on Apr 22, 2008 at 10:07 am

@SEO Best Practices Guide: can’t say anything definitive about SEO Spyglass unfortunately. Will have to look at it.

@Oliver Taco: thanks for the link!
Snel Lenen on Apr 22, 2008 at 10:23 am

I think linkdiagnosis is far from accurate. It seems that the tool doesn’t show very old (thus valuable links).

I still work with Yahoo’s backlinkchecker! All by hand! :)
Matt Davies on Apr 22, 2008 at 10:54 am

Somehow Link Hound had passed me by - it looks fantastic! If it has truely ironed out the irritating little niggles that Yahoo site explorer brings up then it’s certainly a useful tool!
Wade Young on Apr 22, 2008 at 4:47 pm

Link Diagnosis didn’t work well for me. It returned only a fraction of the links I have. Link Hound gave me only errors. Domain BC was helpful, though.
Janusz on Apr 23, 2008 at 6:29 am

Snel,

Can you give me an example? Link Diagnosis reports all the links that Yahoo does but strips out site-wide links so you won’t see thousands of links there like on yahoo, which I think its useful feature and makes analysis quicker. There is no filter that it would remove old valuable links.
Cher on Apr 23, 2008 at 6:34 am

Thanx for the info. Right now, I’m using SEO Firefox Extension tool. How Link Diagnosis is different from it?
Best Dog Videos on Apr 30, 2008 at 4:21 pm

Just ran a test of the 3 tools on my domain.

1) LinkHounds - 16 links
2) Domain BC - 29 links
3) LinkDiagnosis - 0 links

Seems like Domain BC is the most complete of the 3 tools.
Baidu SEO on May 2, 2008 at 6:53 am

Thanks for sharing. I have been using the link tool included in WebCEO and quite satisfied with it. I will try the link diagnosis tool soon.