Check the percentage of Natural vs. SEO links in your backlink profile
Konstantin Kanin
21st Jul 16 1:13 pm
New feature appeared recently in Megaindex.com — Russian backlinks analysis tool. It allows now to check the percentage of natural and SEO backlinks for a specific domain. Links report (which is by the way totally free) you can see the full list of incoming links with descriptions Org (natural) or SEO (purchased link). When I’m writing this post, Megaindex algorithm has not yet processed all the backlinks, so some of them may be marked as n/a. Data should appear within a few weeks, according to information from the founders.
This tool will be useful for comparing the share of SEO-links with your competitors, and to predict the probability of getting hit by the Minusinsk filter. Yandex imposes a filter not for the number of unnatural backlinks, but for exceeding a certain threshold in the share SEO-links around the whole backlink profile. However, you should remember that for each branch and for each domain, this boundary may be different.
To determine SEO links Megaindex uses machine learning. The algorithm learns on two sets: paid links and natural links. It uses about 100 factors in deciding that the link is unnatural, although, according to the authors, only 30 of them are really useful.
As the founders mention in a press release, the verification accuracy in case of commercial websites from Russia is now about 80% and depends on the method of link-buying. In my experience, the algorithm now works good, but not perfect. For example, the majority of links leading to the domain http://inpost.ru from websites of their partners (e.g., online stores, using Inpost services), the algorithm has considered as purchased.
In another example, the algorithm identified link with anchor “fashion” as a paid (which is true):
But in the same article (obviously sponsored) link with URL anchor the algorithm defined as natural:
Yandex and Google, in this case, have much better conditions because they use a large group of search quality raters (in Yandex called assesors), which manually help the algorithm to learn better by labeling incorrect definition of SEO-links. For example, Yandex has a service https://toloka.yandex.com where everyone can get paid for making such small tasks.
I think that services like Megaindex should soon introduce the possibility of some feedback. Meanwhile, I invite you to test this tool here: https://megaindex.com/a/backlinks. Please, share your opinion, how well does the service work for your websites?
