Competitive analysis of 301's - Where are the links coming from?

[Whitey]

I'm doing some analysis on a site which has more or less blanket coverage of a 3 word keyword across it's site and ranks well in Google.

Other sites lower in the rankings have good backlinks, content and PR. Only sites which pile on the backlinks seem to get ahead of this site in a minority of the term variations.

There is only one internal link with the term, no inbound links recorded, and therefore I'm assuming there may be some 301 redirects in play. How can i check where these might be coming from, for this term?

[tedster]

That's a tough one, Whitey. I mentioned in another thread that I don't know of any certain, programmtic way to uncover domains that are now 301 redirects -- and if the domain involved was previously a powerhouse of some kind, the effect on PR and keyword ranking can be significant.

Sometimes you can play detective and look at shared IP addresses for clues. Or even go one step back and look at shared IP addresses for linking partners. Some sites will have their main domain share the server with a domain that is only kept alive as a 301.

But that work is tedious, and also barely scratches the surface. You may need the Wayback Machine, and you may need to do lots of whois lookups and some educated guessing, and even then, much of the data you would like to see is not available to mere mortals. There are registrars who will set up a domain level 301, for example, and therefore it's not sharing a server with the principal domain or its linking partners.