KP begins the discussion:
"I have a question I'm hoping one of you can answer for me. About a year ago I came across a Web page with instructions on how to find out who has linked to our site. There was something you typed into the search engine (AltaVista?) before your Web site address. I've also used a link from a site that did the same thing. It's not perfect but allowed me to see some people/companies that had linked to us that I was not aware of. Does anyone have an idea on how I can re-create this or find out who has a link to our Web page on their site? Thank you!"
DL suggests:
"Go to AltaVista and in the search box type 'link:www.myweb.com' or whatever site you want to find the linkages for."
NK recommends:
"LinkPopularity.com is a good tool."
TL shares some insight:
"To see what sites are linking to yours, DL recommended visiting AltaVista and typing in 'www.domainname.com' to pull up a list of all sites linking to the site you specify in your search.
The problem with this is that it doesn't always work. I've tried it with some dynamic sites that I know have numerous external sites linking to them, and AltaVista didn't even list the original site, let alone the linking sites. Also, if you previously listed with Overture but no longer do, you may find AltaVista no longer provides any info on your site (while still carrying info on sites that never had an Overture effort). Strange, but true. The LinkPopularity.com tool is far more accurate (and usable for free, at least for now).
On a different but related note, one of the best (and only) ways to find out what sites are actually sending traffic to your site via their link(s) to your site is by analyzing your Web server logs. The Referrer information in the logs indicates where visitors came from before they hit your site, and you can often use this information to back-track the visitor's path and see where on the referring site your link appears. Most Web server log analyzers (software and services) offer Referral parsing as part of their service package."
KP, who posted the original query, replies:
"Thank you for this tool [LinkPopularity.com]! I think it is the same one (or similar) that I used before. I had originally been thinking of the 'link:' before the Web site name at AltaVista but I found this one to be more useful. However, as someone else said, none of these are perfect by far. I know of dozens of sites not listed for one of the clients I ran a search for. Thanks again for the help!"
Related article: Popularity Contest
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