Accuracy of link reporting = SE /OSE

[jaffstar]

Most of us use Yahoo site Explorer, Open Site Explorer or Majestic to report how many backlinks our sites have ( I use all three).

OSE report that their index is updated +- every 4 weeks. We are building links and I find that these tools dont always pick up the links we get.

The big question, how accurate are these tools for reporting link growth?

How long should we check , is every weeks realistic to trawl the entire internet?

All my links are indexed in G and are live (tested), yet these tools are not that accurate.

A client can often just run a report on OSE and from this come to the conclusion that you are not building links.

What is everyones experience/thoughts on this?

[Planet13]

I think that you just have to tell them that OSE isn't that accurate and you just have to give them a spreadsheet on a regular basis of the URLs that you are getting links from.

I don't think it is going to be getting any easier than that, to be honest.

[FranticFish]

Just so you know, Yahoo are discontinuing SiteExplorer - see [ysearchblog.com...]

The API will be withdrawn on 15 September and the tool will be completely withdrawn by the end of the year.

AFAIK that will only leave Majestic and OSE because BackLinksWatch and all the other free tools use the API.

[chewy]

nice review of backlink checking tools here:

[inqbation.com...]

while it covers OSE / Majestic and a few others, it seems to miss some of the more controversial methods like those that come from the #*$! team.

are there others worth reviewing?

I hope Brett allows me to drop this link - I got it from a little birdie who got it from Brett.

[FranticFish]

I have two more to check out myself (not affiliated with any): Raven Tools and Ontolo. Dunno what they're like but my own private tool is based on Yahoo's API and I need to find a new data provider before mid-September. I'll post back if I find any more.

[Cruxo]

Hey jaffstar, I can totally relate to this. In fact, I posted a similar thread a few weeks ago at [webmasterworld.com...]

To prove the growth in links, I use Google Webmaster Tools or even Bing Webmaster Tools. At times I found that even BWT is more accurate in picking up new links that we built.

[Tiggerito]

I use YSE, OSE, WMT and Bing to gather back links. I just did a test run on my website. Of all the links I gathered not one of the sources gets more than 50%.

Over half the reported links no longer exist. This is spread over all the sources.