Tomorrow it is time for my second monthly roundup. My first roundup where a huge success and this time I thought it would be a good idea to give some link love back to all of you who have mentioned me during the month.
During the collection of posts linking to me I realised this could be of interest for more of you, so here you have a post on how to find blogs linking to you.
Why Keep Track
As I mentioned above I collected posts for my monthly roundup but there are actually several more reasons to why you would like to keep track.
1. Express Gratitude – It is always a good idea to leave a nice comment thanking the author for taking the time to not only mentioning you but also giving you some link love.
2. Know What People Think of You – Another good reason to keep track of posts mentioning you is to find out peoples feelings towards you. You may upset a blog owner for some reason and then it would be a great idea to quickly find him and sort it out.
3. Create Roundups – If people take the time to mentioning you the least you can do is to return the favour and give the blog owner a backlink.
Methods to Find Blogs
Most blog owners take advantage of the built in function in Wordpress for trackbacks. Even though this is a great method and I recommend everyone to use it there are three reasons to why it does not always work.
- Someone link directly to your homepage and not a post.
- The script did not send out a ping for your blog.
- Something went wrong.
Because of this I will mention two other methods, Technorati and Google.
Google Blogsearch
I am not using this service only to find blogs linking to me but also to find blogs writing about a specific subject, but more on this in another post.
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=link:domain.com&scoring=d
Copy the URL above. Change domain.com into your own domain and then paste it into your favourite browser.
Technorati
This is a method I started to use recently since a lot of blogs did not ping Technorati before. Maybe it is because I am blogging in English now, because for some reason more English blogs seems to end up there.
http://technorati.com/blogs/domain.com?reactions=&sort=freshness
Copy the URL above. Change domain.com into your own domain and then paste it into your favourite browser.
Group Discussion
Do you keep track of blogs mentioning your site? Which sites do you then use and what do you think are the advantages of doing it?
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Good stuff Stefan! I knew about the Google method and was surprised at the small number of results that appeared when I just tried it, as I know that we got a lot more things written about us than that shows. Maybe it just takes time to get updated.
As for Technorati… thanks for that link, as I never knew you could do that. When I checked that, I had way more links than I thought it world
I have also noticed a big difference and this is why I try to use both of them. Would be great if there was a service with all of them. Tried using Google Search for a while but there you will also see every dofollow comment you make.
Finding out about who is linking to you is not only important but fun. It also gives you a great idea of what is working and what is not as desirable for links and traffic. It’s also nice to know what is being appreciated.
Thanks for the tips. I only used google alerts for this task since now.
Google has an application called Alerts and you can put in any url or word and get it emailed to you. I log into Gmail and then go to settings and then go to account setting. You will see Alerts on the left hand side, give it a try.
I have tried this before but never got any good results. At the moment I’m using the term “ducedo” but then it wont mail me when someone links to me. How do you make sure it will do that as well?
Good tips of finding your existence elsewhere. Till now, I used Google alerts for the same purpose. I will surely try your tips now.
George also recommended Google Alert. I will have to try it and then update my post with new information.
Hey that was a very good post! I did not know that little blog search technique you had and I think the others are some good reminders as well. In terms of expressing gratitude, I definitely try to do that, such as with social networks, a comment, etc. Truthfully I could do more and your post reminded me to do this.
I remember someone once was saying – maybe it was Michael or Sylvie Fortin – or maybe it was Charles Heflin (sorry I can’t remember!) that, what if every time someone linked to you, they got a ton of Diggs, Stumbles, Retweets, and the whole nine-yards on their post. They would definitely be happy to link to you again when you have good content. I think that is very smart and it is win-win for everyone. Also is a good way to make friends
Thank you Anna. I think one of the most important things to have a successful is not only to deliver great content but also be social and appreciate other people. If you don’t show your gratitude they will probably not keep give you value. By the way, thank you for your RT.
Stefan great write up and even I prefer both the method. Though Google blog search is not perfect, it does not update all the resources for which you triggered an alert and technorati blog reaction has the same story but the good thing about technorati reaction is you can find which blog is copying your blog post, coz even that is also added into the reaction.
I have still not had the honour to have this blog copied but I guess it will come. Just a few weeks ago someone made a copy of googleadsensegenerator.com and copied my text, etc. A bit disturbing.
Hey Stefan!
Cool, thanks for sharing this method!
I didn’t know that it existed.
haha that is so cool to find out!
Most of my links are from PluginID
Keep the posts coming and congrats on how your blog is developing.
Diggy
I find Technorati the best way to find new blogs linking to you..Also my wordpress dashboard notifies about the new links with the help of Google’s Blog search which is a very useful thing.
I used the dashboard before but it also shows posts I comment, which doesn’t work in the long run when you make 20+ comments a day.
We can also find it by looking at pingback ..Wordpress readily provides this feature in admin page..This also one good way to find it..Google Webmaster tools is also another option …
Personally I really like pingback (trackback) but the problem is that all sites doesn’t send out a ping and if they link to your firstpage you will not receive a ping.
This is a very helpful post I am always concerned that someone wrote something about one of my posts or blog and I missed the link, I always believe in sharing the link love.
Just catching up on a little reading. Good post, Stefan. Thanks! I like your ideas and tips. My results were better than I expected.
Cheers,
Scott
Amazing blog, stefan!
I use technorati to check who is linking to me. But google blog search is a new way to see .
I suggest Ice Rocket as well. It also has some way to see if they are linking to your blog.
Great post!! thanx for sharing