Looking for a program that tracks backlinks to a website over time. One of the big features we're looking for is to be notified when a new sites links to us. Preferably it would have the ability to look backwards to see who was linking to us at a particular point of time to allow us to see how our backlinks are growing or shrinking over time. Google Analytics works to a degree, but we're looking also for links that aren't getting clicks. I'm sure I could use Google Alerts as well, but that seems unmanageable and time consuming. Does anything like that exist? If not maybe I gave somebody a new business model idea...
Although you would have to compare the generated lists manually, SEO SpyGlass might be a very handy tool for backlink monitoring, it also has a scheduling function, but I don't know whether it is possible to do some trick with this tool to achieve what you look for.
I also use SEO SpyGlass and I must say that's one of the best seo tools I've seen. They also have an unlimited free membership, which is quite nice
Thanks for your replies. I'm asking for a lot, yes - but I don't neccessarily need it all. I'll settle for a tool that can do half of that stuff, but if there was one that did exactly what I needed I wanted to know about it. Will definitely check out SEO SpyGlass. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.
You can also try backlinkwatch which shows about 1k backlinks, but once you get more for your site that can be a problem. The obvious choice would be google webmaster tools, or doing a search in yahoo site explorer.
I don't think there's a tool available that does everthing you want. The best option is to build a tool yourself with PHP that queries Yahoo and stores the backlinks in a DB. A tool like that could also be used to monitor your competitors. I may build something like that and publish it, if I can find the time...
The seomoz linkscape tool is pretty good. Just hit their first page and look at the "free tools section." The basic report is free.