New: Track Flow and Link Metrics Over Time

This week sees a new link tracking report from Majestic SEO letting you view the Trust Flow, Citation Flow and other link quality characteristics of any URL or website over time – updated daily. The report means that you will be able to follow the link quality of a URL and it will be interesting to see if there is any correlation between a change in a URLs position and whether the change was caused by an increase in good (or bad) links. Because Flow Metrics start calculating many link iterations away from the url you are tracking, there does not have to be a change to the pages that physically link to you for there to be a change in the page’s fortunes on the web.

Above is the report in tabulated form, with a handy CSV export of course. Here as the days go by, you will be able to see the metrics rise or fall. Probably our most well known report is our free backlink history checker. So we have also created a similar chart in the tracking report which will plot these data points for you from the moment you start using the report. We’ve only been testing it for a few days… but you can probably guess what it will start looking like as time moves on:

Unlike the Backlink History checker, which tracks every website’s link count all the time anyway, this report will only start tracking a URL, website or domain (your choice) when you start asking us to do so. This is great because we can include more variables in the tracking. Trust Flow and Citation Flow side by side will be the default layout.

Then – just for convenience for data junkies who want to see day by day whether there is a change in the world’s link graph that affects them, we default the whole report to a dashboard which compares today’s metrics with yesterdays with a nice bit of green or red to let you see at a glance whether today’s the day you like or hate penguins and pandas.

Can I get the data historically?

Because Flow Metrics are so new and advanced the data does not go back for five years. In addition, people only care about a fraction of URLs on the web, so it only makes sense to start tracking over time when you know you want it. We then store that data especially for you – which means it is attached to your account status. Keep your account live to maintain the data or remember to export it as a CSV file occasionally as a backup.

The history of all this

Some of our oldest and most loyal of users might remember that we once tried to check every new link found or deleted to your site, day by day. It was a computationally complex method which we abandoned in 2010 in preparation for our Fresh Index development plan. I think you’ll agree that Fresh Index rocks :). However – it is great to be able to bring back some tailored reporting to users and we know how powerful it is to be able to track data over time.

What’s other differences between these charts and the Backlink History charts?

Glad you asked. Apart from tracking Flow Metrics over time, the data is also more accurate when it comes to backlinks and referring domain counts, because of the way in which the original data is stored and managed going back over 5 years. Now we are recording like with like from day to day.

So this is going to cost a lot right?

Nope. This service will be open to all accounts of silver and up. Whilst you use a tiny token of your account’s resources to set up each report to stop scraper abuse, that’s about it. We want you to come back and check your data regularly. We don’t want you to have to refresh your advanced reports every time if the changes look small… but likewise we want you to know when the link graph has changed around you.

So we would love to hear your comments and thoughts. Is this useful? Will you use it on every customer and competitor from here on in? Or only when needed?

Where do I see this new function?

It is a new type of REPORT, so wherever you see this symbol: you can create reports. There are now three types: Standard, Advanced and now Tracking reports. Once created, they are grouped together in your reports folder.

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Dixon Jones

Founder of DHJ Ventures and Founding CEO of Inlinks, Dixon is also the Global Brand Ambassador at Majestic.

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