Using Reports in Backlink Analysis

So let's get started and review the reports we can use to perform a backlink check. In our previous article on how many backlinks does a website have, we introduced reports and described how we could use them for backlink analysis.

Another aspect of reports is the availability of downloads. In fact, for each report created, you can check backlink data online OR you can opt for a complete download.

Reports are the work-horse of Majestic. You can run a backlink check for a website, starting with the Reports tab on your account page. Majestic allows users to group reports in folders. Folders provide users with a single location to group and consult similar reports. To access the reports in a folder, simply click on it.

Majestic has organised reports based on Types. There are two types of reports:

• Advanced Reports
• Standard Reports

Standard Backlink Reports

Standard Reports offer in-depth detail for the most important links to a website. That's the big difference between the two reports (advanced and standard).

The difference is in the AMOUNT of data provided. Advanced Reports will return ALL backlink data.

Standard Reports return a limited amount of data for the most powerful backlinks. For both reports, the small house icon, indicates a report created using the Historic Index.

The lightning bolt indicates a report created with Fresh Index data. In both cases, when a circle appears next to the house or bolt, a new version of the report is available.

The refresh icon indicates Majestic has updated the index and fresh data is ready for download.

Differences between Fresh and Historic Index

The Majestic Historic Index is the most extensive such index of backlinks available on the web today. The historic data of a website spans back more than five years. As you can imagine, this index is a sort of registry, a record of past events.

The Fresh Index contains the most recent data crawled. Updates of the Fresh Index are constant and frequent throughout the day. The Fresh Index is a snapshot of a backlink profile as it happens and is typically what we refer to for a backlink check in an ongoing SEO activity.

In Majestic, we have the Fresh Index to see what is happening as it happens. The Historic version of the index is the history - things that happened in the distant past.

When should you use the Historic Index data for a Backlink Analysis?

Historic data is useful in a backlink check for analysing the history of any given site. Use the Historic Index to discover or reaffirm past relationships that are no longer live.

For example, Historic data is useful if you're interested in purchasing a domain name. Before buying, you need to analyse historic data to understand the history of the website. For instance, you'd like to know:

• What happened to the website over the years?
• What reputation it has?
• Is the website trustworthy?
• Which are the most relevant Topical categories?
• Are the Topical categories in line with the new business objectives of my website?
• Has the domain entertained relationships with SPAM websites?
• Are there signs of a toxic backlink presence?

So you see, many questions demanding an answer find a reply in the dataset produced by the Historic Index.

When is the fresh dataset index data most useful?

Links reported here tend to have a higher probability of being live.

Recent links offer more opportunities for networking and link building.

If you like, it's somehow like calling someone you've met at an event or a party a few weeks earlier, compared to 4 years ago.

To summarise, your backlink analysis should be on the data from the Fresh Index. You'll need data from the Historic Index on fewer occasions.

So let's jump directly to a report page and look at the data! The report page is your starting point to explore all data available for a given backlink profile. From here you'll navigate all the different sections of a backlink profile.

Majestic presents the essential data you need to know. Here on this page lies the answer to who links to your website.

You can immediately see top numbers of your backlink profile - in this case:

• Backlinks for the site point to 89 subdomains
• Total number of backlinks
• The number of referring domains
• Top anchor text used in backlinks

Reports show only the most relevant backlinks for extensive backlink profiles. If you need all the data for your backlink analysis, you must download it. We'll see more on the topic very soon.

Below the fold of the page, you'll find the last big panel. This table is a list of the top pages with the most backlinks detected by Majestic. Each URL is inspectable via the Search Explorer. To trigger the analysis, hover over the cogwheel. From the contextual menu, choose an analysis option and view more detailed data.

The data Majestic presents on this page may not provide enough insights. Depending on the requirements of your backlink analysis, you might need more data before deciding on what you should download for your SEO activities.

Notice how at the end of each section a link opens a new page with more data. So consider, for example, the data in Top pages/links of this screenshot. You can see the link at the bottom suggesting you click to get a more detailed report on the domain URLs.

Referring Domains is the most significant view to discover who's linking to a website. Here Majestic provides a list of the most authoritative domains linking to a website. The table lists the best backlinks coming from the domain (if there is more than one backlink). You can drill-down and find more data on a specific link or URL by clicking the cogwheel.

As we mentioned earlier, data from each section of Reports offers a download. The download provides an amount of data which is representative but may not be enough.

In our article on how to count backlinks, you learned to download a report. A report looks like this after downloading and uncompressing the file. Majestic provides data in CSV format (That's comma-separated Value). It's a generic format everyone can read and easy to manipulate. If you're going to use and organise the data in Excel, the best way to proceed is by opening the file with a double click.

A warning to those of you who are new to this. If the size of the file after uncompressing is anywhere above 10 Mbyte, you might have problems. A file that size anticipates the presence of tens of thousands of backlinks. Now that amount of data might prove to be too much to handle. You're almost definitely going to run into trouble if the size exceeds 20 Mbyte. So be careful! The report download delivers all the data of a backlink profile. All the backlinks and their metrics are there for you to review and process.