Link to vs. contain the term

[Billyray]

What is the difference between the two? I have a number of links to my site from other sites but, the vast majority only show up under "pages that contain the term". Thoughts?

[seobook]

hi Billyray
welcome to the forums :)

1.) google backlinks are currently broken (meaning they only show a small sampling of backlinks into your site when you use the link: function)
2.) many pages that mention your site might be created by screen scrapers or be PPC ads that go through ad counters or may otherwise not provide a hyperlink to your site.

[Marcia]

What is the difference between the two? I have a number of links to my site from other sites but, the vast majority only show up under "pages that contain the term". Thoughts?
Several months ago Google seems to have decided not to show all the backlinks any longer. At one time they showed just those that were PR4 or above, occasionally some PR3 would show up. Not any more - now it's a random selection, including some scraped sites (some of which still carry some PR) which it's my guess was because of the abuse of the system being encountered.

It just simply isn't possible to find the correct number of backlinks at Google any more, but when you think about it, it's primarily site promoters who used it anyway, not "normal" searchers. From all I've gathered Google does not want webmasters (or SEOs) creating their sites for search engine rankings, but for users. So it figures.

The ones that contain the term are exactly that - the ones making mention of the domain, whether or not they're actual links.

[Billyray]

Thank you for the information. Much appreciated.

[Anthony Parsons]

And you could always use something like PR Weaver to analyse anchor text from all your links! Still doesn't help the broken Google issue though.