CT Biz Blogs

In Part 1, I talked about two ways of finding out who’s linking to you; via email, and with trackbacks. Here’s the next installment.

3. Blog watches/search engines.

There are a number of search engines which specialize in searching blogs. The first one was Technorati. Other popular blog searches are: Feedster, Blogpulse, and Icerocket.

With the blog search engines you can search for links to your site, and then (and this is the really cool part) subscribe via RSS to those searches. That way, you’ll see any new links whenever you crank up your blog feed reader. (If you don’t have a feed reader, think seriously about getting one! Here’s an article I wrote a while back about reading blogs and one on organizing your reading via webfeeds.)

If you look on the right sidebar of this blog, at the bottom you’ll see a section called “My bookmarks.” In there is a link called “blogs that link here.” This is a link back to the Technorati search for this blog. You can do this for your blog by going to Technorati, signing up (free!), “claiming” your blog, and creating a search for it. You can have that as an RSS feed, as well.

I’ve had a Technorati watch for a while, but I haven’t had a chance to explore some of the other search engines, so I decided to hop over to Feedster. At Feedster’s site, there is a link to a search for blogs that link to my blog.

However, I wasn’t overly impressed with the results — it only listed two posts I’ve written, which link to other posts I’ve written. I knew that already! Still, it’s always good to see how others see you, so I added that to my blog watch feeds. I’ll have to investigate these results. I’ll let you know what I learn.

Next, I tried IceRocket. They listed more, but still, only the posts that I had written on CTBizblogs. Well, blogging experts say you should link to your own posts, when you can, so I guess I’m doing a good job of that!

Finally, I tried BlogPulse. They actually did find posts in which other bloggers have mentioned me. However, they only found three of those, and I know there are more.

Still, more grist for the mill, so in it goes into my feed reader subscriptions. Now I’m ready to find out when anyone mentions CTBizBlogs in a blog post.

[Updated content follows]
You can also use search engines to specifically search for inbound links, also called “backlinks.” You can specifically search for links to your blog, using the right terminology. This is explained in detail in the article Search Engine Optimization: The Backlink FAQ on the Entrepreneur’s Journey blog. Check it out.

There is also a good overview of this (and other ways to check for inbound links) at Successful Blog, in their article SEO – Link Checking Tools.
[Updated November 27 at 4:07 PM EST]

Ok, item is #4, Referrer Logs, or Stats. Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion (with screenshots) in Part 3.