<b>The 'first-seen' burst that dates a paid campaign</b>

<b>The 'first-seen' burst that dates a paid campaign</b>

Word is you can timestamp a competitor's entire link-buying budget just by reading the first-seen dates — and most people never sort by them.

The forensic read:
— Export referring domains, sort ascending by first-seen
— Organic growth dribbles in — a few links a week, all year, from varied sources
— A campaign shows as a wall: 40-120 domains all first-seen inside a 2-3 week window, often quarter-end when budgets clear
— Match the burst against their content calendar. No new linkable asset published in that window? Those links were bought, not earned

Multiple profiles reveal their whole spend rhythm this way — you can literally see Q1, Q2, Q3 buying sprints as stair-steps in the timeline. It also tells you their vendor's cadence and roughly their budget. The dates betray the strategy. Watch this space.