Link monitoring helps you find pages sending readers to your business and understand how they use your material. Keep the discovery date in mind: a link can enter the collection long after it first appeared online.
Imagine finding a link today in a two-year-old article. That's useful to know, but it doesn't tell you when the publisher added the link. Even the article's publication date won't show whether the link arrived in a later edit.
OppAlerts counts new results in a 24-hour indexed-date window ending at the daily run. News pages also need a publication date within the last seven days. Prospect Index counts have no publication-date requirement, so older pages discovered in that window can count too. These rules determine when a result is counted, rather than when its link was created.
Check those dates before thanking a publisher for recent coverage or reporting a result to a client. A rise in newly discovered links doesn't automatically mean this month's outreach earned more placements.
Read why the publisher included the link
Open the older article, read the passage, and follow the link. A citation to your research serves a different purpose from a product link. Understanding that purpose can inform your next work even when you don't know the link's original date.
Check whether the destination still works and supplies the right information. If it doesn't, give the publisher the referring page, existing destination, and replacement URL. Explain how the replacement supports the passage so they can verify the correction themselves.
If the link follows your outreach, compare the live page with your request and record what was published. Those records support a claim about work you pursued. The discovery report also helps you find links you didn't already know about.
The collection doesn't cover every link. It also doesn't tell you a link's value to a search engine, how many people clicked it, or whether it will stay. A quiet period may simply mean fewer relevant links entered the collection.
Record the link with the dates you can establish. It can still be useful coverage when you don't know exactly when it was added.
Related reading: Brand Link Gap, what the backlink data shows, monitoring brand mentions.
See how OppAlerts fits your work.
Tell me what you are working on and what you need to find out. I can walk you through the relevant reports and explain what OppAlerts can help you do.
You can explore the demo first, or use this form to ask about a task or arrange a demonstration with me.