Large Difference in Backlinks

[craig34]

I used the Link Popularity Checker over at webmasterbrain.com and I've found some startling results:

Search Engine Links found
Google: 68 found
AltaVista: 204 found
MSN: 165 found
All the Web: 208 found
Yahoo: 13,800 found

Any idea why Yahoo is registering so many more links to my site than Google? I understand Google is a bit more strict with who they count as a backlink, but the difference is incredible.

[rustybrick]

Yahoo is much more aggressive when it comes to displaying which sites link back to you. Test a bunch of domain names and you will find this to be the same. even searchenginewatch.com brings back the following:

Search Engine - Links found
Google - 18,000 found
AltaVista - 44,077 found
MSN - 31481 found
All the Web - 48,688 found
Yahoo - 294,000 found

[David Wallace]

Google typically only reports backlinks from pages that have a PageRank score of 4 or better while the others show all backlinks regardless of PR scoring.

[Joseph Morin]

With the integration of Alta Vista and AlltheWeb by Yahoo, we've seen a change in the link displaying options, AlltheWeb had disabled it, but it appears that Yahoo has incorporated this feature from ATW. The link number reported by Yahoo appears to be similar to the number formerly reported by ATW.

As for Google, they typically only show PR4 or higher backlinks but in many instances that is not always the case. We've done some research and noticed many ocassion where a PR1 will display as a backlink but it appears to be random.