14 DAY TRIAL // Google is adding a very interesting tool to Analytics, it is now possible to see all the backlinks to any of your pages via the new Social Reports. This makes it easy to see who is talking about you on the web and in what context. The idea is borrowed from blogs, but it's been extended to all websites.
"The concept of trackbacks, a protocol by which different sites could notify each other of referencing links, first emerged back in 2002. Since then, the blogosphere has grown in leaps and bounds, but the requirement for each site to explicitly implement this protocol has always stood in the way of adoption," Google's Ilya Grigorik wrote.
"If only you could crawl the web and build an accurate link graph. The good news is we already do that at Google, and are now providing this insight to Google Analytics users," he announced.
Trackbacks provide links to any website that links back to you. Of course, you'd be able to see any visitor that came from those links, unless the sites take steps to remove referrer information. But you only get that link in Analytics if someone clicks on it, and even then not always if you have a decent amount of traffic.
With Google Analytics' new method, you'll be able to see any page that links back to you soon after you publish any content. This info is very useful in a number of situations and can provide insight that regular Analytics stats don't provide, like how viral a piece of content is.
It's not particularly easy to find the backlink info in Analytics. It's buried inside the Social reports, part of Traffic Sources, the Pages subsection. In the Activity Stream tab, you'll see an "Events" link where backlinks will be displayed among other activities such as +1's.