To know how many web sites are linked with your anchor USE

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allinanchor:"your keyphrase" for Google
inanchor:"your keyphrase" for MSN
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If you submit this line into search field, search engines will show
you the sites that are linked with exactly the same phrase is anchor.
What is the difference? Huge!

For example, submit "automatic link exchange" (without quotes) to
Google search - you will see around 6,070,000 results. Do you need to
beat 6,070,000 sites in link building if you pick this phrase? No,
because Google showed you all sites that have "automatic link
exchange", "link exchange", "automatic exchange" and all other
possible combinations of these words on their pages. And for you to
get top position you need to beat only the sites that are linked with
"automatic link exchange" in the anchor.

And when you submit to Google allinanchor:"automatic link exchange" -
you get only 283,000 results - 20 times less competitors. Surely it's
not a very easy keyword, but when you dig in your niche, you will see
that some keywords have very nice traffic, but they are not often used
in anchor text - this is what you are looking for.