Best way to check the number of backlinks?

[seanjohnson]

I know everyone is going to say opensiteexplorer (for obvious reasons) however why is there such a diffference in numbers between the following resources:

1. Open Site Explorer - 23 ref. domains & 939 links

2. Majestic SEO - 49 ref. domains & 599 links (fresh) / 111 ref. domains & 2332 links (historic)

3. Google Webmaster Tools - 6001

I understand the difference between fresh/historic in Majestic, it's the vast difference in numbers between the three services?!

[SEOKeith]

OSE only shows links from the more reputable sites and does not show links from low quality sources.

Majestic index shows more links and has a larger index - this could be better for you, personally I would rather see all link data possible for a domain.

Google Webmaster Tools is always going to show more links, Google for obvious reasons have a lot more power to crawl the Internet and store large link databases (GWMT is typically more complete IME).

That is why there is such a difference in back link figures between these services.

I use all these services + bing webmaster tools link checker (it allows you to check back link profiles of other domains, not just the ones you own like GWMT).

Hope that helps,

Keith

[seanjohnson]

Thanks Keith, that makes total sense

[RobertChapman]

SEO Keith has pretty much hit it spot on.

I would try and use a combination of all 4 if at all possible.

From my observation GWT accuracy seems to vary dependent on how often your content is crawled..... showing a history of all your links i'm not sure it can be beaten. But accuracy of what is included I am unsure. We have a few external links that were pointing at our site which we know no longer exist. 3 months on they are still in our link profile according to GWT.