mcskoufis - 10:16 am on Jan 10, 2012 (gmt 0)

Hi Planet13, we discussed this in another thread. I am not so sure if the paid tools offer so much value and I agree with Weel about their index not being updated frequently enough so you see a lot of links which do not exist or the webmaster has updated the page with all link opportunities lost. I find this in both OSE and RavenTools.

Personally I like using Raven Tools for its UI and its features other than link building. Link-building-wise it does include data from Majestic, including what it calls the "historical" and the "fresh" index.

Recently I tried some free tools which definitely don't provide as much data but they offer good opportunities for finding links.

Backlinkwatch is a nice free tool as well as the Backlink Builder of Webconfs.

But I think the best tool of them all (paid and free) is a Google search with advanced operators. You can find gems if you search right.