# How can I find out who links to me? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 12, 2004, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-out-who-links-to-me/228761 "2004-02-12T00:48:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Panopticon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d2c977/32.png) [@Panopticon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Panopticon)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2004, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-out-who-links-to-me/228761/1 "2004-02-12T00:48:57Z")
I have a crappy ass blog and I want to know who, if anyone, is bothering to link to it. Is there a way to cull this info? I did try to google for this first. Thanks for the help. Panopticon ---
**Author:** ![pung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ebca7d/32.png) [@pung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pung)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2004, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-out-who-links-to-me/228761/2 "2004-02-12T00:59:54Z")
Ok, this is a pretty terrible answer but: In theory Google will tell you who is linking to your page if you type the following in the Google search field: link:\ for example, I can see who is linking to my game with: link:www.mariotan.com/lander/ Now the problem is that google is only returning eight pages linking to my game. I know for a fact that more than eight pages are linking to that address… so… so yeah… my post is worthless but it’s a start! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2004, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-out-who-links-to-me/228761/3 "2004-02-12T01:00:18Z")
If your webhost provides Webalizer software, just access your [http://www.url.com/stats](http://www.url.com/stats) directory and see the referring sites. Alternatively, plug in your URL [here](http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.php). This is not comprehensive though. ---
**Author:** ![Panopticon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d2c977/32.png) [@Panopticon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Panopticon)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2004, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-out-who-links-to-me/228761/4 "2004-02-12T01:48:40Z")
thanks ya’ll. Know I know just how unpopular the site is. -Pan ---
**Author:** ![wolf\_meister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf_meister/32/15202_2.png) [@wolf\_meister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolf_meister)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2004, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-out-who-links-to-me/228761/5 "2004-02-12T03:39:32Z")
Another site to try is [www.linkpopularity.com](http://www.linkpopularity.com) Also, going to [www.alexa.com](http://www.alexa.com) will give you a rough idea of how popular your website is plus it will give you a list of sites linking to yours. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2004, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-out-who-links-to-me/228761/6 "2004-02-12T04:03:01Z")
The link: thing on google doesn’t work. My site (which has been indexed for several months is linked to by several other sites, but when I try that it doesn’t show any of them. I emailed google because I was worried that it would cause a problem with how my site is ranked. They basically said that I shouldn’t worry, and if I wanted a better way, just search for sites that contain my web address. ---
**Author:** ![Gopher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gopher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gopher)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2004, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-out-who-links-to-me/228761/7 "2004-02-12T07:55:51Z")
Thanks for nothing, pung! I just wasted valuable time playing your game instead of doing my work. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2004, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-out-who-links-to-me/228761/8 "2004-02-12T11:08:48Z")
> [@Joey P](#): > > The link: thing on google doesn’t work. My site (which has been indexed for several months is linked to by several other sites, but when I try that it doesn’t show any of them. I emailed google because I was worried that it would cause a problem with how my site is ranked. They basically said that I shouldn’t worry, and if I wanted a better way, just search for sites that contain my web address. **link:_yoururl_** on Google shows only a subset of links to your URL: those pages that link to your URL _and_ have a Google Page Rank higher than a certain threshold value. For a list of more links to your URL use the **link:_yoururl_** term on [http://www.alltheweb.com](http://www.alltheweb.com) . ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2004, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-out-who-links-to-me/228761/9 "2004-02-12T14:14:59Z")
I suggest if you want to be exhaustive you try them both. Google gave me three results, and alltheweb gave me three different results. ---
**Author:** ![aahala](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a88e4f/32.png) [@aahala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aahala)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2004, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-out-who-links-to-me/228761/10 "2004-02-12T14:39:06Z")
You can find the links thru google by clicking “advanced search” and filling the inquiry box down aways on page – I don’t know if that gives you the same results as the other method. Google’s your friend in getting links – pull up the popular sites in your site’s subject, do the find links for the popular sites and SELECTIVELY email those asking for a link. I’m batting nearly a 1000 for my sites using that method and gotten several hundred links that way. It does take work, I examine each site beforer writing and probably exclude from contact many more than I contact. There’s no need to ask for a link that has none already or sites that appear to have essentially no traffic or unrelated to the topic of your site. ---
**Author:** ![Eleusis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Eleusis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleusis)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2004, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-out-who-links-to-me/228761/11 "2004-02-12T15:04:22Z")
Assuming your “crappy ass blog” is not on your own domain, with your own hosting, and you don’t have access to logs or stats, you can put a free [3rd party counter](http://www.whatcounter.com/) on your site that will track referrers among other things. (You could do it anyway, but if you do have your own domain/hosting, there are better ways than a javascript counter) ---
**Author:** ![Gfactor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@Gfactor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gfactor)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2004, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-out-who-links-to-me/228761/12 "2004-02-12T17:38:03Z")
> [@Panopticon](#): > > I have a crappy ass blog and I want to know who, if anyone, is bothering to link to it. Is there a way to cull this info? I did try to google for this first. Thanks for the help. > > Panopticon A response from an expert librarian I know. I like URL investigator at AlltheWeb [\.](http://www.alltheweb.com) Enter the URL of the target page and the search results show external links to the page. It may be enough to answer your question, but you should know that different search engines will give you different results because they index different parts of the Web. Consequently, for thorough coverage, you should run the query in the five major engines–Google, AltaVista, AlltheWeb, MSN Search, AskJeeves. ---
**Author:** ![bbeaty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c0e974/32.png) [@bbeaty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bbeaty)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2004, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-out-who-links-to-me/228761/13 "2004-02-12T18:29:25Z")
Altavista finds way more than Google. Same as with others, just type link:[http://yourURL](http://yourURL) into the search field [http://www.altavista.com](http://www.altavista.com)