Why does my Australian Website rank like it does?
Have you ever wondered why a site with similar content to your own seems to get better search engine positions than your own?
The answer may lie with links that refer to your site from other sites. But how do you get a view of that information?
Once upon a time an exhaustive list was available on the web, which was provided by various search engines. Nowadays however, that seems to have been diluted to a point where it can't be used anymore.
One may speculate as to why. Perhaps the answer is the information was abused by "the dark side of the force" known as SEO companies who sell their services.
Web Wombat has operated a public search engine for many years in the Australia web space. Clearly, part of the information gathered revolves around the collection of links. Recently Web Wombat begun experimenting with making this information publicly available.
Curious web masters can go to http://s.webwombat.com.au/analysis/linkmap.php and enter a URL of their site. The analysis program will consult the link database and then produce a "Christmas tree" diagram along with a list of all (Australian) sites that refer to the entered URL.
The diagram shows the various sites that link to (green) and link from (grey) or both (red) as a series of rings. These rings correspond to the site's "rank". The lowest ring corresponds to a rank of zero, while the highest ring corresponds to a 9. (The Australian Broadcasting Commission is the only 10 in Australia).
Mutually referring sites often show a network pattern. The red sites usually provide tell tale signs of their ownership and explains why some sites mysteriously appear higher in search results than other similar sites.
Please enjoy using the information. Abuse shall lead to consequences, so don't bother creating automated programs to garner information from this system.
