Tagged “reporting”
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Verifying the Link Line Item on an Agency Report
Ten links delivered is a claim about URLs, dates and attributes. Here's the per-row check that turns a monthly report into something you can confirm.
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What an LLM Citation Count Is Actually Counting
A count of AI answers citing your domain is a sample of prompts, run at a moment, in one product. Here's what varies and what the number can support.
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Why Backlink-Tool and Rank-Tracker Pricing Don't Scale the Same Way
One tool's cost curve tracks the size of an index it already built; the other's tracks a query it has to run right now. That's why they price differently.
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Changing Link Tools Without Losing Your History
Two vendors' link counts are not one time series. How to switch primary tools and keep a reporting history that still holds up afterwards.
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Setting Alert Thresholds on Link Metrics Without Chasing Noise
Most link alerts fire on index churn and get muted within a month. Which events deserve a notification, and which need a quarterly review.
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Small Link Sets and the Limits of Statistics
With eleven referring domains you have a list, not a distribution. What you can legitimately say when n is too small for statistics.
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How to Tell Whether a Link Did Anything
You can't isolate one link in a live search index. Here's what you can honestly claim, and how to build a case that survives scrutiny.
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Referring Domains Versus Total Backlinks
One of these numbers is stable and informative; the other is dominated by footers and templates. Which to report, and why.
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When a Metric Moves but Nothing Changed
Index refreshes, recalibrations and plan changes all move link numbers with no site event behind them. How to check before you investigate.
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What First Seen and Last Seen Actually Mean
These timestamps record crawler activity, not publication or removal. Using them as link dates quietly distorts every trend chart you build.
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Building a Link Report You Can Defend
A defensible link report labels its source, states its denominator, separates observation from inference, and survives someone opening another tool.
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Page-Level Authority Metrics and When They Beat Domain Scores
URL Rating, Page Authority and their kin score a single page's link position. For most link questions they're the more relevant number.
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Sampling, Export Caps, and Missing Rows
Every link export is truncated somewhere. If you don't know where, your percentages describe the truncation instead of your link profile.
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What a Link Gap Analysis Can and Can't Tell You
An intersect report lists domains linking to competitors but not to you. That's a set operation, not a finding. Here's what it supports.
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Anchor Text Distribution as a Dataset
Anchor reports are a frequency table with a long tail and dirty rows. What the distribution can tell you, and why ideal ratios are folklore.
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Reading the Search Console Links Report
Google's own link report is capped, undated, and aggregated by site. Those three quirks explain most of the confusion it causes.
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How Many Backlinks Do You Need to Rank?
There is no number, and anyone quoting one is guessing. Here's the bounded estimate the data does support, and how to present it honestly.