Webmaster's buddy

Having just launched out of beta, Microsoft's Live Search Webmaster Center now boasts a revamped backlink checker, reports Search Engine Journal.

The backlink tool provides data on sites linking back to a given destination, enabling site owners to watch for plagiarized work, gauge their popularity in the community and improve their overall rank in organic searches. (Referring links, from quality sites relevant in your field, contributes to a search spider's impression that you, too, are relevant and high-quality.)

The Backlinks tab in the Webmaster Center now lets users filter options by top-level domain, subdomain or subfolder — which can also help determine how many links are from social media sites like digg.

Users can download the top 1000 backlinks of their sites in a CSV file.