Who Linked to Your Site? These Helped Find Out

I was revisiting one of the articles I collected earlier: How to maximize the power of Google search engine to help your search (info in Mandarin). And I ran one of the functions- "link:www.thesite.com"- to see if there are any sites that connects to mine (Daily Wendy). If so, who are those? (Maybe I can also figure out the "Why" at the same time). Luckily I also came across a very useful article listing all the free online software to check backlinks: "How To Check How Many Backlinks Your Site Has." So, here it goes, using "Daily Wendy" as an example to see how powerful and different are these tools.

1. Type in "link: wendysdreamland.blogspot.com" on Google search

• a: some from aggregation sites: Sphere.com, cityfeeds.com
• b: some by me: Facebook, iReading愛閱讀
  
• c: where I've visited and left comments with my blog address: Shane's View, Fili's World, 律師歌手蘇兒真的部落格
  
• d: a few by people I know well: ByteSurgery(Robin), Mom Goes Back (Eileen)
• e: random folks I don't know at all: 我思我見
  

2. Use SEO Pro's Link Checker
http://seopro.com.au/free-seo-tools/link-checker/

• It shows that I have 2,713 backlinks (wow!) with a spreadsheet listing everything like this chart below
• After putting the listings into a excel file and trying to figure out what is going on here, I discovered:
  a: >90% them are from Fili's World (Wow!)
  b: some from aggregation sites: feedburner, Sphere.com, technorati.com
  c: some by me: LinkedIn, Twitter, Plurk, postcrossing, blogger, slideshare, inside IMC
  d: a few by people I know well: ByteSurgery(Robin), Mom Goes Back (Eileen)
  

#	BackLink	Homepage PR	PR	Links count	Anchor	Anchor Type
1	http://www.filination.com/blog/	0	4	231	?	?
2	http://www.filination.com/blog/2007/03/25/chinese-baidu	0	3	396	?	?
	-search-engine-optimization-seo-in-china/
3	http://www.filination.com/blog/2006/09/02/is-the-chines	0	2	404	404	404
	e-government-against-lonely-planet-on-the-taiwan-issue/

3. Use SubmitEdge's PageRank Checker Tool + Alexa Tool + Link Checker Tool http://www.submitedge.com/pr.html

PageRank　　　　　　　 　1

Alexa Rank　　　　6,397,684

Listed in DMOZ　　　　　No

Backlinks from Google　　 16

Backlinks from Yahoo　 2,974

Results from AltaVista　　207

Results from All the Web　114

4. Use iWebTool's Backlink Checker
http://www.iwebtool.com/backlink_checker

• No results found. I guess it did not track blogs
  

5. Use Smart PageRank's BackLink PageRank Check
http://www.smartpagerank.com/pagerank-backlinks.php

• No results found. I guess it did not track blogs

6. Use Professional Link Building's Free Website Valuation http://www.professionallinkbuilding.com/websitevaluation.aspx

• Page Ranking Analysis: Google PageRank: 1
• Backlinks from Major Search Engines:
  

Google: 0

Yahoo: 3,173

MSN: 0

AllTheWeb: 1,170

AltaVista: 2,640

• Total number of backlinks: 6,983
• Alexa Traffic Ranking: 6,397,684
• The Estimated Value of This Website Based on Available Metrics is: $122
• Potential Revenue Streams From This Website:
  

Text Link Advertising: $0 monthly (terrible!)

Product Placement: $2 monthly (not much better)

Affiliate Marketing: $2 monthly (well...)

Independent Advertising: $0 monthly (so poor XD)

MY OBSERVATION SUMMARY

• I don't know why these tools reported with these many different results. Number of backlinks ranged from 2,000 to nearly 7,000. Which one is closer to reality?
• Blogs might not be included in some of the backlink tracking services, which is controversial. Why should they be excluded?
• Apparently most of the tools did not conquer the "language" issue. As a long time blogger and online community participant, my backlink should show much more data. (So many records should be from Mandarin Web sites, e.g. Wretch.com, 104.com.tw, citifamily.com.tw, etc)
• All my blogs are connected and share so many blacklinks. All are public and searchable. Where are they in this blacklink search?
• How about my Picasa photo albums (all public and searchable)?
  
• I knew so many more other blogs or Web sites were connected to my site. Where did they go?
• Monetize your site with the dollar value ($) is a great and clear idea. Made sense!

I will try to find another Web site to run the analysis again to compare my discoveries. Let's see if "blogs" are outcasted.....