How can I create an accurate backlink profile?

[cmecham]

With Google's emphasis on punishing over-optimization I would like to make sure I keep a close eye on my backlink profile. Link Detective is a great tool, however, for sites which I know have thousands of backlinks in WMT and MajesticSEO, OSE only finds a handful--maybe 10%.  How can I trust the information I get from OSE to provide me with actionable data when the raw numbers of backlinks are so far off when compared to the other databases.

[SeanConroy]

I have the same problem. I know my site is linked on a bunch more sites, but every month they don't show up in OSE and I just don't get why. Does OSE only grab a certain amount of the web? And if links to your site arn't in that percentage they just don't show up.

[KeriMorgret]

OSE only does crawl a portion of the web. We are trying to crawl more URLs, but also make sure our data is fresh. It's a bit of a massive undertaking to try to amass data at this scale.

Check out the blogpost for our May update at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/may-mozscape-index-update164-billion-urls for some more information about OSE, where we're at, and where we're going.