For us, 2012 began just like 2011 ended. We have been constantly improving and expanding our databases, developing new features and modules and now we have two big changes for our transition from closed to open beta.
Link Essentials Open Beta
Our crawler has been digging through hundreds of millions of websites and identified billions of links. We used this data to develop KPIs and reports from which we now present you the first and, in my eyes at least, most useful. For the next three months, we are making Link Essentials available to everyone as an open beta. All you need to take part is to register – no payment or long-term commitment required!
We have crawled an incredible amount of data and continued to scale our system to accommodate a growing numbers of users. We are also continually updating our databases with new links. The system is designed to deal with an extraordinary number of links and for this reason we currently have 43 billion links in the test mode alone (with over 100 billion crawled). But more important than the number of links, is the purpose of use of these links. What use are 100,000 links to a domain if you have no associated evaluation criteria? This is just junk data. In this area, we have continued to refine our analysis and the results are described in detail below. Please remember that this is a beta release and therefore there is no guarantee that all the functions and values will be the same as in the live release. We are still optimizing a lot of the data, and with increasing import levels, we are also changing the Page Strength and Domain Popularity values. So don’t worry if your results change suddenly during the beta. However, please send me your feedback, ideally as a comment with your address. We will do our best to collect and address all your feedback.
Register here free-of-charge for the Link Essentials Beta.
The most important data in overview
We’ve also improved the Essentials start page by collecting all of your important data in one place. Simply enter a domain for immediate results – anyone can now perform searches. However guests and registered users (registration is worth it for this reason alone) will see additional, deeper, and more detailed data.
Newly included are the SEO and Paid rank metrics. They evaluate the top 100,000 domains for each country and provide a real comparison of where you and your competitors stand. The only trouble you might have with our new start page is being able to pull yourself away!
Click here to go to the new Essentials start page.
More about Link Essentials
Fresh links, a break-down according to link type, detailed anchor text analysis and referring page types – Link Essentials is ready to go. Even though we’re launching with a reduced data set for the purpose of performance testing, the beta contains a range of vital reports and functionality. We are extremely proud of the result, having invested a lot of time and effort to provide you with ever fresher data, deeper analysis and more detailed results.
We have packed a lot of information into the analyses and reports. Where else can you find a backlink overview with the positions of linking sites or an anchor text analysis with this much detail? Where else can you review the internal link structures for analyzed domains quickly and easily? Plus, in a completely new addition, we now offer you the page types of incoming links – i.e. blogs, news sites, shops or web directories. We have no doubt that you know exactly what could be done with this kind of information.
Just as exciting is our industry sector of origin section. We let you know where links are coming from for each domain, allowing you to identify link strategies and discover the sectors where a domain is likely to perform well. How do we know all this? Here we get to show off the connection to our SEO module, and we even have a similar report in the SEO+SEM module that shows the real payoff to you from our massive data stores.
Which links are the freshest? In other words, what’s happening to the domain right now? For this, we have a tally of the freshet links as well as the most import metrics to help you rapidly identify which anchor texts were most recently used and which subpages they refer to. Here, freshness is key. We know how reliant link building is upon fresh data. This is why we crawl all of our data ourselves, without relying on anyone else, and can ensure that we will continue to regularly deliver fresh data into the future at the level of quality that people expect from Searchmetrics. Our goal is to provide you with the highest quality and most practical link data, not to bother you with each and every outdated or site-wide link that we find.
Searchmetrics Page Strength: a completely new measure for an ever-present need
The next big thing: with ‘Searchmetrics Page Strength’ (SPS), we calculate a value for the link strength of each page and subpage. Something like what Google’s PageRank used to be and, according to Matt Cuts at least, still is. With these tools at your disposal, you can easily evaluate a page’s backlinks in a single glance with links from stronger (i.e. strongly linked) sites weighted more than links from weaker (i.e. seldom linked to or not all) sites. All of this is naturally presented on an intuitive and easy-to-understand scale from 0 to 10. Don’t forget: as the number of links increases this will affect the Page Strength metrics as well.
In the next few months we will continue to release new components and features that are currently going through the final checks on our test servers. I think we have probably proven that we have what it takes to impress with functionality over the last few months… And don’t forget people – this is just the beginning! There are still a few Elements to come, the likes of which you will have never seen before.
Dive into Link Essentials and get started straight away
Our offer for Link Essentials: to access our unique link data, you only need to register, free-of-charge. Nothing more. Then you’re ready to start, as quickly and simply as that. As a registered user, you are allowed up to 500 queries per day and can access the complete data for up to 1000 links. Of course, customers of our SEO/SEM and Social Essentials and Searchmetrics Suite receive additional queries and data for additional links.
Many of you will already know the simple and straightforward approach of Link Essentials from our SEO/SEM and Social Essentials. The well-known and well-reviewed user experience allows every SEO to arrive quickly and easily at their analysis goal. In addition, for anyone feeling a little lost at sea in a new environment, explanations for all the various KPIs, graphs and tables aren’t hidden in some help file, but can be found directly on the site via the little question marks you will see throughout the software.
Link Essentials Functions
But back to Link Essentials once more. What will you find inside? I’ve compiled a list to provide a quick overview of what’s on offer:
- The most important KPIs, tables and graphs in a single glance
- Detailed link data in tables including:
- Link type (text, image links)
- Target and origin URL
- Anchor text
- Link position
- Searchmetrics Page Strength (SPS)
- Filter capabilities for all values
- Analyses of link, host, domain, IP and IP C-class popularity
- Most recent links, linking sites and anchor texts
- Internal link structure
Please note: We know that we aren’t perfect and look forward to hearing any criticisms, suggestions or praise.
Searchmetrics Essentials: complete website analysis
Together with the SEO/SEM and Social modules, the Searchmetrics family continues to grow and provide you with the tools you need to analyze and optimize every aspect of your domain. A perfect addition to our project-based enterprise software, Searchmetrics Suite, adding the additional practical elements to your optimization workflow. Speaking of Searchmetrics Suite, we have a few big things in the pipeline in this area as well. But more about that when the time is right…
In addition, since we believe that every online marketer should be using these tools, we’re offering everyone access to our basic-level data. For every country! Anyone can identify a website’s most important information without the need to register:
Have fun!
Marcus and the Searchmetrics Team
P.S. Let us know about your SEO in our comments – we look forward to hearing how well your sites are ranking