FREE Link Popularity Analysis

Introduction

The Internet is growing everyday, and the work of the search engines is getting tougher. Search engines are constantly looking for innovative ways to serve the most accurate and relevant results to its visitors.

The search engines have incorporated popularity factors into their ranking algorithm in order to create better relevancy formulae. This does not mean that the on-the-page factors or the importance of content can be ignored. If there are two sites with equally optimized meta tags and attractive content, the site having more link popularity will attain a higher search engine position.

The main point is that on-the-page optimization will no longer get you top rankings by itself, unless it is enhanced with high-end link popularity.

The objective of the search engines is to serve those web sites which are recommended by many other web sites. Ranking the relevant web sites according to their popularity neutralizes the effects of search engine spams and manipulation of the on-the-page factors. Search engines like Google were able to provide outstanding search experiences for surfers by incorporating popularity factors into their ranking algorithm.

Link popularity of a web site is the total number of web sites linking to it. The search engine must index the web page that your link appears on. In the recent past, people believed that just the "Number" of sites pointing to your site determines the link popularity. The more sites linking to your site, the higher your ranking will be. This is just the first half of the popularity story.

Link analysis is closely related to link popularity, but with a twist. Link analysis (or link popularity analysis) is the number and quality of the inbound links that point to your site. It is beyond the number of links. Here, it is not the number of links that matter, but the quality of these links that is important.

The search engine software and the programmers who create them are not dumb. They are aware that many web masters create artificial links with the hope of boosting their ranks in the search engines. Because of this, search engines make use of link analysis rather than link popularity.

Analyzing and evaluating the number as well as the quality of links is actually link analysis. In this article, we'll look more closely at the other factors influencing link popularity (apart from the numbers of links) and how link analysis works.

How search engines use link analysis

Search engines use link analysis in their ranking algorithm, as it is very difficult to get quality links for a site if it is not worth it. In a link analysis system, only the most relevant and popular sites will attain a high search engine position. Link analysis is a very useful and foolproof way to determine which pages are good for particular keyphrases. It is a mathematical way to determine if others in your industry think that your site is important.

Link popularity vs. link analysis
Quantity vs. quality of the links

In a link analysis system it is easy to filter out the spammers who set up several free sites and then make them link to their main web site. These days, search engines do not give importance to links from free web sites in their link popularity scores. They combine link popularity with link analysis and use it to assign a weighted link popularity score.

All links on the Internet are not of equal importance, as the crawlers analyze the quality of the web sites. In a pure link analysis system, it is important to get links from popular web sites which are related to the keywords you want to be found for. Getting only a few links from popular sites will be more useful than getting several links from unpopular web sites.

The other factors in a link analysis system are the context of the links, authority of the web sites, the number of outbound links from a web site, and the similarity in themes between the linking sites.

If you want to attain high search engine ranks in the search engines that use link analysis in their ranking algorithm, you have to be associated with reputed web sites. You also have to make sure those sites have keywords related to yours. It's also important to use targeted keywords throughout your site, and have relevant explanatory text around your keywords and links.

How to measure link popularity

Link popularity is determined and analyzed by each search engine in its own way. AltaVista may calculate a high link popularity for your site, whereas Google may calculate a low popularity for your site. This is because each search engine uses the popularity information in different ways, and it will depend on their specific algorithms.

Visit the homepage of the specific search engine and type the formulae we have mentioned in the search box and click on search. Notice that we have eliminated http://www. in the urls. While measuring link popularity, substitute your own web site name in the domain name. Do not forget to include the .com, .net or .org in the domain names.

Altavista & Infoseek

link:domainname

This will return the total number of sites linking to your domain.

As the web pages of a site sometimes link to each other, in this result, the web pages of noname.com itself which are linked to its index file will also be included. To eliminate the web pages of the same domain, the syntax is,

link:domainname -url:domainname

To find out the link popularity of a particular web page, type

link:domainname/filename.htm

Directhit

There is no way to determine the link popularity of a web site in Direct Hit.

Google

link:domainname.com

It will return the number of web sites linking to the site noname.com. But there is no command to eliminate the web pages, which are linking to its own domain.

Hotbot and other Inktomi powered search engines like AOL, iWon and MSN

linkdomain:domainname

It returns the total number of web sites linking to the domain.

linkdomain:domainname -domain:domainname

It returns the total number of web sites linking to the domain after eliminating the links from the same domain.