What is the best way to make sure competitors or others aren't buying links on my sites behalf to penalize us?

[jim_shook]

Is there a good way to do this? Does the Open Site Explorer have an ability to screen by when the link was found, or help by picking up on potentially shady links? Thanks much..

[irvingw]

Also take a look at incoming links in Google Webmaster Tools, you can export that as well. usually when someone tries to attack your site they use adult links, so these are pretty easy to identify due to the site names.

[jim_shook]

thanks ryan...that helps a lot

[RyanKent]

You can export your OSE results to Excel. From there, you can organize your links. I would suggest taking this step and understanding all links to your site. The data is helpful for many reasons.

OSE is updated about once each month. When a new update comes out, you can download the updated information and compare the current file with your historical file. This method will help you understand what new links have been acquired and what links have been lost. Understanding your newly acquired and lost links is an important part of any site's monthly SEO maintenance.