We’ve finally got backlink data live.  Here’s what you need to know.

Resolving Domains & URLs

The first thing to notice is this icon which you’ll find to the left of your domain or URL. Before we actually pull link data we resolve the URL you’ve entered into your account. Hover your mouse of that, or click it and you’ll be taken to the page which we get redirected to if your domain / URL is entered into a browser as is.  We do this because we get different link figures depending on how a domain or URL is entered. So, if your redirects are setup correctly, and have been for a while, your backlink figures should be correct.

Where We’re Getting this Data

We get link data from four different sources, to give you the most comprehensive look at an overall link profile for a domain or URL. Yahoo! Site Explorer, SEOmoz’s LinkScape, MajesticSEO and Google Blog Search give us our link counts. LinkScape and Google Blog Search give us our individual links. Each count is an actual link which takes you to the source, as we’ve accessed it. For the social media & email blog, Convince & Convert, we’re reporting these figures.

Link count via Linkscape…

Link count via MajesticSEO…

Link count via Yahoo! Site Explorer…

Link count via Google Blog Search…

You may notice we report slightly different numbers than you’ll see on Yahoo! and Google Blog Search, which is normal. They should be about the same though.

If you are seeing something strange, make sure to let us know.

Domains vs. Pages

You can actually enter a specific URL into your account and all data will reflect that page, ranking data included.  One of Jay Baer‘s more popular posts about must do’s for serious bloggers attracted a good amount of links, which we can see here.

We can also see a list of blogs linking to that post specifically as well. This list is updated in real-time, so you’ll see new blogs linking to a site or URL as they’re discovered, which is pretty darn quick

Graphing Historical Link Data

You can even graph historical link counts. Clicking the little gray graph button  pops data into a graph. Here we have Yahoo!, MajesticSEO and blog link data graphed.

Which produces this graph…

That’s about it for now … enjoy!

Domain labels can help larger account distinguish two of the same domain. Why would an account have the same domain in it twice? In this video, you can see how to separate branded, from non-branded terms using multiple domains and domain labels. That’s one use case. You may also have two different clients with the same competitor. This makes it easy to figure out which one is which!

Setting up your AuthorityLabs account is easy. I made a quick screencast to walk you through the process.  All you have to do is add a domain then add some keywords. After a day, you’ll start to see your account populate with ranking data.