I’ve been trying out a new link tool today called SEO SpyGlass and I have to say I’m very impressed.

To start off, I’m impressed with the fact that there’s a Linux version of this software! It also comes ready for Windows and Mac.

It is a Java based link intelligence tool that you can use either for your site, or your competitors. It has a lot of features including getting the Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, domain and page PageRank, Directory listings, domain age and more.

Really, anything you need to do high level link analysis and building.

I put it through it’s paces today and I have to say the more I used it the more impressed I became.

So let me tell you more about it.

When I first installed it under my Fedora installation, it opened into a wizard where I inputted the URL of the site I wanted information on. You can even just do a page here if you liked.

You then select the engines you want to query. Google is selected by default, however you can also add MSN and Yahoo. I’m sure as time goes on you will have the option to add more engines, however at this point, do you really need to know what links your competitor has in Lycos?

Once you’ve set your preferences, you let the program run. Now, depending on the number of links, it can take some time. For example, on a site that has about 1000 from Google, Yahoo and MSN combined it took the program about 10 minutes. That wasn’t too bad I thought.

But what’s really impressive is when you get to play with the results. All the different columns (there are 18 in all – that means 18 different criteria you can look at when reviewing the links) are sortable from lowest to highest.

Just want to look at the higher PR links? No problem, just click on the PR heading and instantly your results are sorted.

From there you can dig even further. There’s a “quick filter” box in which you can filter out site links, and next to that there’s a drop down menu that allows you to further refine your list.

For example, if you only want to see blog and forum links, simply select that option and the remaining links are filtered out. If you only want to see directory links, you can do that as well.

Once you are done filtering (or if you don’t want to) you can analyze the results. this is where it gets interesting.

Here you can get the keywords, anchor text, anchor URL, PageRank of the domain and page, IP addresses and more.

I have to say, I don’t think I’ve come across a link tool that is as easy to use nor as intuitive as this one.

And best of all it runs on Linux :)