When was the last time you checked out TouchGraph? It's been at least a couple of years for me, but I ran across it again while Stumbling. Wow, either I don't remember it being so cool (although I do remember it being cool), or it's evolved nicely since then. Here's a screenshot of one of my site's neighborhoods. There's lots of slider controls, filters, and other gizmos that let you adjust things.
If you aren't familiar with TouchGraph, their description of it is:
The TouchGraph Google Browser reveals the network of connectivity between websites, as reported by Google's database of related sites.
This is what I'd call the Cool SEO tool of the day (even if it has been around a long time).
I hadn’t seen this before and gave it a whirl. Pretty neat.
As I’m understanding this, it does not reflect actual link relationships (but sometimes does), but rather reflects thematic similarities or contextual similarities.
So if I’m correct with that assessment, I would think this might be a good tool to look for possible one-way IBLs. Yes?
Actually, it pulls from Google’s similar pages function, which basically lists sites that are either linked to the page, OR are listed on pages that are linked to the page. I suppose there could be other reasons for related: sites showing up, but those are the ones I’m most aware of. So it’s kind of a “your neighbor is my neighbor” thing, or maybe a 6 degrees of separation kind of thing. In any case, however it is exactly calculated, yes, it can certainly be used to look for possible backlinks.