Link Experiment Results - Part III

On 11 August, 2005, I started an experiment.  I posted a blog entry titled Attention Bloggers! (i.e., the "experimental URL"). I asked fellow bloggers to create a link to that blog entry. I would then attempt to identify all of the incoming links.

Three days later, I posted a list of 114 incoming links. See Link Experiment Results - Part I. I asked those who provided a link that I didn't find, to identify themselves. I listed these unfound links at Link Experiment Results - Part II. This listed consisted of 10 blogs, plus eight more who identified themselves in the Comment section.

At least 132 bloggers linked to that experimental blog entry, and I identified 114 of them -- for a "find" rate of 85%. It's extremely likely, however, that other unfound links exist, and the blog owners simply haven't checked back to tell me. Therefore, my actual success rate is probably closer to 80%. 

I examined a number of blog search sites to see how many links to that specific blog entry they could find. I also did a general search for my blog URL for comparison. The table below shows the results for nine search sites.

In terms of sheer number of links returned, MSN Search is the surprising winner. For the experimental URL, I don't think it found all of them, but it did better than any other single search site. Based on this little experiment, my opinion of MSN Search went up a notch or two.

Please note: Based on this single project, it's not possible to draw any conclusions about the relative value of any of these sites. It's entirely possible that if this experiment were repeated, the search sites would have an entirely different ranking.

But I think we can definitely draw this conclusion: No single site is able to identify every incoming link -- at least not yet. All of the sites listed in this table are worth exploring. Check 'em out, and see which ones you like. Most of them offer other tools that are useful to bloggers.

For a more detailed analysis of this project, and additional information about the tools I used, see:

• Lookin' For Links In All The Right Places.

Finally, thanks to all who participated. I've learned a lot during the past few days, and I hope you find this information helpful.