Posted by rjonesx. Over 7 years ago, while still an employee at Virante, Inc. (now Hive Digital ), I wrote a post on Moz outlining some simple methods for detecting backlink manipulation by comparing one's backlink profile to an ideal model based on Wikipedia . At the time, I was limited in the research I could perform because I was a consumer of the API, lacking access to deeper metrics, measurements, and methodologies to identify anomalies in backlink profiles. We used these techniques in spotting backlink manipulation with tools like Remove'em and Penguin Risk, but they were always handicapped by the limitations of consumer facing APIs. Moreover, they didn't scale. It is one thing to collect all the backlinks for a site, even a large site, and judge every individual link for source type, quality, anchor text, etc. Reports like these can be accessed from dozens of vendors if you are willing to wait a few hours for the report to complete. But how do you do this for 30 tri...