Best Way to automatically find links to your content?

Question

So, here is the task I've found myself thinking of. Pretend for a moment, that I have a large body of content. I want to see what websites are linking to my content. I know that I could look into TrackBack or PingBack but what about those that aren't using tools capable of dealing with that?

It would seem that some form of Web Crawler that looks for pages linking to the original document might be useful. My question to the greater community is what would be the best way to get started here? Do TrackBack and PingBack do more than I assume? Are there services or tools out there that already do what I'm thinking?

Answer 1

Google is your friend!

Use the link prefix:

link:whatsite.com

And yes, trackbacks do more.

Answer 2

If you have HTTP referers setup in your logs, you can mine them. You can even discover pages taht does not know about.

Else, there is the paying Linkscape from Seomoz or the free majesticSEO (if you confirm ownership of the domain).

MajesticSEO has a bigger backlink index and an API (need to login!).