Majestic SEO are proud to announce that our free tools now allow you to check not only overall backlinks by url or domain, but we also now give you .edu/.gov link numbers and we are especially pleased to be able to give you the Class C numbers. All at lightening speed and all for free. If you want the actual urls and anchor text, you will need to be on one of our modest subscriptions to see these.

Here’s an overview of what we are launching today and why it’s valuable.

Backlinks by Class C’s

A “Class C” is a domain block – or group of IP numbers usually assigned to a large or intermediate ISP. Usually, if one company has multiple website s, they will often put them on the same IP number – which we already reported on. However, the more sophisticated companies will use separate IP numbers for different website s. Even so, unless all these websites were managed with completely separate hosting providers, they would generally be within the same class C range. I do not presume to say what the search engines may or may not choose to count as relevant in their algorithm, except that I WOULD suggest that counting the number of referring class C block to a website is probably a better indication of the number of genuinely different companies linking than referring domain name alone. I do not know of any other system that can offer this publicly. I know a number of advanced SEOs tend to use their own tools to work this out, given a set list of backlinks – but that takes time and skill. Now we can give you this data almost instantly. Here’s how it shows (These screenshots carry dummy data only):

Backlinks by Class C subnet and by .EDU and .Gov
Majestic Backlink Checker

Backlinks by .GOVs /.EDUs

You will also see that the screenshot also shows the number of .gov and .edu domain name linking in. Some people feel that these domain name are a mark of quality. Again, I we are not here to judge that for you. We just want to show you the data. Extracting this from other systems is fairly tough. It IS possible to find a count for backlinks from .edu or .gov sites using Yahoo site explorer and some other parameters at this time, they are not counted by domain. So we hope we have another first here.

We are also showing you this data in our BULK domain backlink finder tool. You can check and compare the backlinks for up to 150 domain name at once. Listed like this:

New bulk backlink checker results
Majestic Bulk backlink checker results

Sort the bulk backlinks on the fly

The bulk backlink checker also saves you from having to download all the results on to a CSV to sort them(even though you can), because you can sort the results on the fly as you get the report:]

new index bulk backlink checker sorting options
Majestic Bulk Backlink Sorting Options

What else should we tell you >

OK – it’s worth saying that we have INCLUDED links from .mil domain name in the .gov list and have also included the .AC.* and .edu.* domain name in the .edu list at this time.

To be able to get this data quickly, it is pulled from the same database that we use to get your standard reports. This means that there may in fact be MORE links in our full database – but these figures will not only provide a pretty good estimate, they will also be lifted from the stronger links on the web, based on our own ACRank score.

Tell us below whether this is what you need

We think this is all pretty cool stuff… what do you think?

Here’s some quick links to try for yourself:

A backlink report for Majestic.com (Replace our URL for yours)

The Bulk Backlink Checker page (add a list of domains or cut and paste)

Happy hunting.

Dixon Jones
Latest posts by Dixon Jones (see all)

Comments

  • SEO Singapore

    The best news is this :

    “All at lightening speed and all for free. ”

    🙂

    April 22, 2010 at 8:47 am
  • Ryan @ Linkbuildr

    Really cool and great news guys! I don’t know what I’d do without the tools and I’ll be spreading the word on this!

    April 22, 2010 at 4:47 pm
  • Dixon

    Glad you’re liking it!

    I personally think the Class C stuff will show up some real red flags on some back-link profiles and will become a bit of a useful metric. Now we just need someone to do some testing and case studies to verify whether links across multiple Class Cs is indeed better than links from multiple domains on different IPs on the same class c’s. Anyone up for the research?

    April 22, 2010 at 5:07 pm
  • Andy @ FirstFound

    Excellent work. And thanks for keeping it free!

    April 22, 2010 at 5:26 pm
  • Michael Martinez

    The search engines have repeatedly stated they don’t care about class C IP addresses. They have to index millions of Websites that are hosted on shared servers. The whole class C myth has dragged down SEO analysis and just made a mockery of analytical tools and practices.

    Here are a few suggestions for your next generation of backlink tools (and this advice is offered freely to all tool providers who may read this).

    1) Offer counts by all top-level domains
    2) Offer counts by verified RSS feeds
    3) Offer counts by language
    4) Offer counts by geographical region (MSA in the United States would probably work fine)
    5) Offer counts domain-vs-subdomain
    6) Offer counts by root URL (for both domains and sub-domains) vs. deep content
    7) Offer counts by site-wide vs. individual

    I’m not a big fan of counting links but if people are going to count links they should look at some depth and detail.

    April 22, 2010 at 10:21 pm
  • Dixon

    Hi Michael,
    Thanks for sharing!
    You can get most of those metrics from us, but not in the free counts. I agree that the real value of a link needs looking at on a link by link basis – which is why we build the index in the first place of course.

    I personally think that seeing a site with links from 1,000 domains, buy all on the same class C is a big red flag.

    April 23, 2010 at 9:48 am
  • Colin McDermott

    What a generous lot you are, thanks … it is indeed Majestic! And don’t be put off with the ‘carping’ … this ‘counting’ stuff is just one more variant that allows site owners to make comparisons – however odious to some. And it’s good fun too!

    April 23, 2010 at 10:32 am
  • Daniel

    Great resource and information especially for free.. thanks again..

    May 5, 2010 at 8:14 pm
  • Fotografie

    Does anybody know any serious info that links from .edu and .gov domains work better? It is very hard to get them as everybody knows and I am not sure if it is worth trying.

    May 12, 2010 at 10:39 am
  • C. Pathfinder

    To Michael Martinez:

    Wow, interesting tips but -how do you keep the track?
    Do you have a system in place or something?

    Thanks for the great post anyway, Dixon.

    May 12, 2010 at 7:28 pm
  • Saleem

    First time visitor, great stuff, thanks.
    I have a question if some one could answer that would be highly appreciated.

    I have five simple sites hosted on a reseller account with One IP address, cost :$25 . However, the same hosting firm has a plan that give you 5 IP addresses, cost $35 .

    The question is whether a separate IP address makes any difference when it comes to Search Engine Ranking and crawling by google? Will I be wasting $10 a month by upgrading?
    Saleem

    June 6, 2010 at 7:08 am
    • Dixon

      It depends on how big you plan to get as far as I am concerned and your overall strategy. Some would argue they should be on five separate ISPs, leave alone unique IP numbers. But then again some really large sites are on IP numbers shared with hundreds of others without any real issue.

      June 9, 2010 at 10:14 pm
  • Allen Harp

    I am very impressed with the speed of the link checker – instant! I want to thank you for this handy tool because right now on the three domains I checked, it showed me more incomeing links than some of the regular tools I use.

    As far as the IP address issue, I’ve heard to diversify as well. However, using one of the current popular hosting companies I have an unlimited account which currently hold 28 domains, all unrelated, and there appears to be no problem. The version I heard was that the same IP might hurt you if you were using all of your own sites on the same IP for a heavy duty linking network, it might look weak, but like I said it hasn’t hurt me yet.

    Thanks again.

    July 27, 2010 at 1:53 pm
  • seo content writing

    @Fotografie, authority websites like .edu, .org and .gov are mostly trust by Google. Whenever you link with them, Google rate your site highly.

    October 5, 2010 at 7:12 am

Comments are closed.