Backward Links & Forward Links

Microsoft recently announced the ability to research what pages a domain links at. For example, see what pages this site links at using LinkFromDomain:SEOBook.com. You can also use their advanced search features in combination with LinkFromDomain to look for links pointing at domains within a specific geograph region, and / or adjust the result order by popularity and freshness.

As most seasoned SEOs knows, Google gives sucky inbound linkage data. You still can get a decent sample of recent inbound linkage data from the Google BlogSearch link function though. For example, here are recent blog posts linking at SEOBook.com. Technorati provides similar linkage data.

You can get a more comprehensive view of linkage data using Yahoo! Site Explorer.

I plan on updating SEO for Firefox to include the LinkFromDomain feature and check if URLs are linked from the Wikipedia.

In addition to all of these forward and backward link tools many video content sites and social bookmarking programs allow you to use other's work to explore interesting items, which sorta brings the fun back to the web...finding all kinds of cool stuff.

As technology evolves, and more users become editors, the value of being a general editor will be commoditized to nothing unless you work long hours, have a community helping you, are heavily biased, passionate, or can add some other significant value to the information you consume and sort. But if you are an agressive marketer being able to sort through information so many different ways makes the job much more fun because it gives you so many options.

Published: October 17, 2006 by Aaron Wall in seo tools

Comments

PowerfulPonder
October 18, 2006 - 6:34pm

Find reciprocal links!

linkfromdomain:domain.com link:domain.com

October 20, 2006 - 12:01am

Thank you PowerfulPonder!

October 20, 2006 - 12:25pm

Hey Aaron - great post... I got some more ideas on this here

http://www.marketingfan.com/a/search-engines/3-great-uses-for-the-msn-li...

and an I really wonder if you are already working on the "Authority Finder" that I thought about - the counterpart to your hubfinder

see you in Vegas...

cheers,
Christoph

Deane
June 27, 2007 - 2:26pm

I picked up some good ideas from this post, thank you all

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July 10, 2007 - 12:18pm

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October 24, 2006 - 10:59pm

aaron,
as always, you overdeliver in your blog. now it will be interesting to see what the pack of info product clowns come up with on this feature.

October 17, 2006 - 11:10am

Aaron,

This post reminds of an interesting blog post I read last year by Paul Allen(not Microsoft Paul Allen, another one). He talks about how the world needs people who will help prioritze the worlds information.

I like the quote he gives of a University President, Jeffrey R. Holland, who said in 1988

"[What] the present world needs more than ever before, are those educated, and spiritual, and wise who will sort, sift, prioritize, integrate, give some sense of wholeness... give both order and rank to important human knowledge."

I believe that as technology evolves It will be people who are seen the "wise" who have established themsleves as experts in a given field because they have gained thier readers trust by consistantly sharing useful and relevant knowledge(as you have with SEO) that will be the voices heard above all others.

I posted my own blog post about this subject after reading Paul's post a year ago.

Lori McDaniel
October 17, 2006 - 5:28pm

I paid for the SEOBook a month ago ... where is it?

jimtimuk100
October 17, 2006 - 7:53pm

Seems like a useful tool and could help if you have a large site

Ian
October 17, 2006 - 9:03pm

Checking my site I found 24,000-some-odd OBLs, but at the bottom of the first results page I get the message "some results have been removed" which then leads to the page http://search.live.com/docs/help.aspx?t=SEARCH_CONC_AboutSearchResults.h... - a typically unhelpful Microsoft help page.

Do MSN's outbound serps have "supplementals"? :D I haven't seen any of our site navigation links included in these results yet. I noticed that MSN has fewer pages in their index than most other search engines, maybe that has something to do with this.

Also there's interesting discussion over at Threadwatch, pointing out some other potential flaws. It looks like the jury's still out on this command. Still, if it works as good as "link:" then I would welcome any tools that include it.

ken
October 18, 2006 - 12:13am

Wow. That is a cool new feature by microsoft's live.com
Def. a breakthrough in search engine optimization technology.

If you are an editor google adsence may help you pull in some extra income.

October 18, 2006 - 1:55am

Aaron,

That last paragraph reminded me of an interesting blog post I read last year by Paul Allen(not Mircrosoft Paul Allen, another one) which I replied to with my own blog post. Paul talks about the need in the world for people who will help prioritze and give order to all the worlds information. I think it is people who have established themselves as experts by continually sharing useful and relevant knowledge (as you have with SEO) that will be the voices that are heard above all others as technology evolves

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