I have previously covered numerous ways to explore your competitors’ backlinks via various web-based and desktop tools and even with the help of FireFox Extensions.
Still all of these tools rely on Yahoo or Yahoo Site Explorer to retrieve the link profile data.
This time I am going to look into 2 alternative search engines allowing to explore backlinks of a site. Neither of them is any better than Yahoo, but what’s important they are different providing you with other data you might have missed.
1. Exalead provides a wide variety of sorting options enabling you to find sites you’d never come across otherwise. With link: operator you can:
- search only for blogs; commercial or non-commercial sites; forums;
- set language preferences;
- set geographic location;
- filter results by choosing the site’s related key term.

(Note: I broke the screenshot in two columns to make it more readable)
What’s more, Exalead advanced search also provides for a number of great options to enhance your link: search:
- inurl:keyword (sample search);
- filetype:pdf;
- intitle:(keyword)
2. BlogPulse tracks blog mentions for any URL you indicate. While being a good addition to Technorati blog reactions search, BlogPulse allows for better tracking options and also works for non-blog sites.








Thanks for the info. I’m definitely going to add them to my list of tools.
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Hello again Ann,
“You are the (Wo)Man!” …. when it comes to link analysis. I really enjoy your posts about link analysis. Can’t wait for the next one. Thanks again for two new ways to approach link building and analysing.
Cheers, SEMatze
Cheers Anne, I’m looking for less reliance on Y!SE (it goes down so often these days) – I was aware of Exalead but not BlogPulse so I’ll start hammering that for backlink info too.
Thanks for sharing.
David Lindop
thank you…
Now that Google in their keyword tool is giving out search volume numbers, something that we never really expected from them, when do you think they might finally give out true link numbers, similar to Yahoo site explorer?
Not quite sure I understand why they have to keep that secret…but then again, I’m not Google.
@ Nesco Food Dehydrator : I do understand why they keep that secret. Smart people will find the way to discover what really worked with G; hence more manipulation… I still can’t believe they will ever start giving out the full backlink report…
Just tried exalead on my art glass and fashion jewelry website and was not impressed. Showed next to nothing in terms of relevant backlinks and showed a bunch of those DMOZ type links like www. universitybooks. com/directory.asp?section=/Shopping/Crafts/Jewelry/Glass
that have zero value. Yahoo is still the best.
I found a way once to limit Yahoo Site Explorer to only showing one backlink per domain.. But I can’t find it again!! Anyone know how to do this? When you do a normal link: in Yahoo SE, if the same domain links to you from 100 different pages, it becomes a bit useless.
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Thanks for the tips, I now can see how some companies may have written programs to bot this type of information then sold the program to do all the work for you.
Thanks for the useful information!
thanks!
You made some good points there. I
did a search on the topic and found
most people will agree with your
blog.It will greatly help me in my
SEO
activities. :)
but the exalead has fluctuating backlink. Unconstantable result given