Question about Google Link: utility

[SEORoy]

Hi,

Think this is something to do with Google so am posting this question rather than the forum dedicated for links...

I have noticed that when I do a search on google for Link:www.mydomain.com, google results says that its found say, 70 backlinks.... However If I repeat the search but instead of Link:www.mydomain.com, I leave a blank space in between...i.e search on Link: www.mydomain.com, google results brings up around 7,000 links.

So that would mean I actually have around 7,000+ sites linking to my site... However, I get the impression that Google is actually ignoring this 7000+ sites linking to me...

My question is whats the difference between these two searches... i.e link:www.mydomain.com and link: www.mydomain.com, if I check one of the sites that was returned in the latter search... I cant understand why its coming up in result for link: www.mydomain.com and not link:www.mydomain.com.

More importantly I cant see how I can rectify this... or if it needs rectifying at all..

Anybody?

[Connie]

Can't explain the difference but when you add the space it is an entirely different search an shows results similar to site:www.domain.com which includes links, references to your your site and what ever.

link:www.domain.com is the proper way.

[SEORoy]

Well It still does not explain why Google displays more site linking to my site when i use the link: www.mydomain.com

I guess you may be right... in saying that link: www.mydomain.com is a completely different search... but when it comes to my purpose/test... its giving me the same information basically....i.e all sites linking to me... however when i do it the "proper" way... it shows lesser sites linking to me...
And also seems the "proper" way does not show the proper results.

I am confused right now..as I dont know whether this is a problem (looks like one to me anyway) .... and also if google cant recognise it when i do a link:www.mydomain.com .... then how do I get google to recognise these..

For that matter... Yahoo and MSN seems to recognise a lot more links to my site than Google...

[dannysullivan]

If you put a space between link: and the URL you are checking on, you are NOT performing a link search. All you're doing then is finding pages that might have your URL listed on them in body text.

These same pages might also be linking to you, as well. And you get the higher number probably because when you do a proper link: command, Google has long chosen not to show all the actual links pointing at you.

Honestly, if you're trying to assess links, just go to Yahoo. It won't have the exact link data that Google itself knows about, but it's going to be far more accurate than what Google itself shows you.

[KeywordMonkey]

Google shows less links that Yahoo and MSN: it's covered elsewhere inthe forums. Google themselves admit they show only a sample.

[kunalg]

hi seoroy i totally agree with dennysylvania that when u put space in the link and url u don't use the link command and u r using the search on "link:" and url. i searched on both and found that the result displayed with space don't have any link to the url else the page have the url written in the body. if u want to try u can also use that and try searching in the pages u will definately found that u don't have any links from many pages.

also if u try link:|http://www.mydomain.com u can find more result than the result displayed with the space between link operator and url.

for any queries i am here to guide u. :)

[SEORoy]

Thanks all for shedding some light on this...

I have checked couple of the sites returned in the list of results for Link: www.ocra.com ....and they all had a link to my site... So I guess that rather than using the link:www.mydomain.com I could just carry on using the search with a space in between... seems to be returning a better approximate of no. of sites linking to my site... :cool:


From: Kunalg
hi seoroy i totally agree with dennysylvania that when
dennysylvania.... who???.... :eek: ..... :p
Thanks for the tip ...though.. am off to try it now...

[JohnW]

>carry on using the search with a space in between.

Doing the search with the space only shows places where your site’s address appears, not necessarily a link. And, it does not show links that have different anchor. A waste of time. Like Danny said, Yahoo is where you should check for links.

[PhilC]

If you only want linking pages pages, leave the space out. Including the space makes it a normal search. You can see this by looking at the cache of the one the results. The Google header will say:-

These search terms have been highlighted: link www domain com

The word "link" is included in the search. That doesn't happen with a command search.

[Michael Martinez]

You will get a more accurate representation of the inbound links Google knows about by searching for references to your root URL on Google. You will find non-link data mixed in with the link data. There is no easy, clear way to get an accurate assessment of what Google is actually counting toward your link popularity.

That means, either type your URL into Google and then click on the "Find pages that contain the term..." link, or do the "link: www.domain.name" query.

You can refine your search by excluding specific domains (including your own).

[kunalg]

it is better if u search on yahoo and consider them as ur back link rather than filtering out result given by link: www.mydomain.com

[mcanerin]

When you do a search for link: www.domain.com (with a space) you are basically looking for "link" and "www.domain.com" which is a waste of your time for link checking.

If you insist on using Google for link checking (and as Danny points out it's not really recommended) then I would use this search:

"domain.com" -site:www.domain.com

which looks for all mentions of the domain but removes internal links from the site itself.

The problem with this search is that it does NOT return results that use anchor text instead of the domain (ie they link to your site with "buy widgets" instead of "www.domain.com"). This is a significant issue, especially if you have done link building in the past and focused on specific anchor text.

In short, it's broken. Danny, myself, and a few others took them to task over some misleading text on their site regarding a claim that the link: command actually showed all the links, and Google responded and fixed the text (NOT the command): http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=2423

Don't use the link: command. I'm sure it has (or had) a purpose to some engineer at some point, but it's not for backlink checking.

Ian

[PhilC]

Also, because Google has a much larger index than Yahoo!, whatever backlinks Yahoo! has for a page, Google is also very likely to have, so, using Yahoo! as a good guide, makes good sense.

[SEORoy]

Hi all..

Thanks for all your replies.. I guess this now got me thinking that using the Link with a space in between... may not be the best way of going round this.. so perhaps using backlinks returned by Yahoo /Msn could be a better idea...

Seems that the Link: command from Google displays only a sample... but how many links constitute a sample... I guess we'll never know.. I mean... if it was really a sample..then for most of the sites we should have had the same no. of links or there would not have been big differences in the no. of links returned by google for different because after all..its just returning a sample of links... But we dont see this .. some site Google returns much more backlinks..

But it could well be a % of total links that Google returns ..lets say x% of Total links..in which case the more links a website has the higher the x% of total will be.

[kunalg]

yeah seoroy

that is right google shows some percentage of links. But i don't think that this is measure in terms of some "x' as pointed by you because the backlinks which google shown on link command must be depend on some criteria like the relevant link or relevant anchor text or links from the site which has pr greater than some limit defined(internal) by google.

[Michael Martinez]

Hi all..

Thanks for all your replies.. I guess this now got me thinking that using the Link with a space in between... may not be the best way of going round this.. so perhaps using backlinks returned by Yahoo /Msn could be a better idea...

It is, unfortunately, a POPULAR idea (as many people here suggest it) with no real merit.

Yahoo! and MSN cannot tell you anything about what Google has indexed. You can use the Yahoo! and MSN results to look up sites in Google (which are not reported by Google's LINK: command) and see if Google is indexing or penalizing them.

It would be tedious work, but that is about the way you can really determine what the value of those unreported links may be.

Seems that the Link: command from Google displays only a sample... but how many links constitute a sample...

I don't think Google ever explained why they watered down the backlinks report, but it has generally been assumed (and I concur) that they did it to discourage SEOs from burning up their servers with repeated backlink checks.

[SEORoy]

Yahoo! and MSN cannot tell you anything about what Google has indexed. You can use the Yahoo! and MSN results to look up sites in Google (which are not reported by Google's LINK: command) and see if Google is indexing or penalizing them.

Yes this would indeed be a tedious work...I actually did this.. I mean started going thru the backlinks reported by MSN and then checking them on google.. I mean..rankings etc..most of the sites (as I have not been able to check them all upto now) ...does not seem to have any problems...I actually came across..couple of sites with PR 4 ...which to me is good enough links..as our site sitting on PR 4 right now...but for some reason doesnot get shown in Google backlinks result.

some criteria like the relevant link or relevant anchor text or links from the site which has pr greater than some limit defined(internal) by google.

Well I dont see any issue concerning relevancy, i mean, for my case... as there are couple of other links that are more relevant but still missing on the results shown in Google link: command. And for PR check, I dont think Google actually use this as a search criteria... Still as per what I saw.. there are couple of site with Low PR appearing in my LInk: command results...whereas couple of Higher PR sites linking to me are not displayed.

So since the last couple of days I have joined this forum and discussed couple of issues that i am getting...and I have come up to this conclusion upto now... Google PR toolbar... not useful (could be Misleading).... Google link:command VERY Misleading...

Hmmmm....is there any other command that actually worthless or misleading in GOOGLE.


that they did it to discourage SEOs from burning up their servers with repeated backlink checks.
Yeah this looks like a possible explanation....although I think if this was the case..the simple solution would have been to, say, put a restriction where you can run a backlink check on a domain/site ... only once per day or per week ...if per day is still too much...

[kunalg]

yeah u can use my this thread to see the problem with the google cache command i.e. how it is misleading us.


cache link (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=4628)

[Michael Martinez]

yeah u can use my this thread to see the problem with the google cache command i.e. how it is misleading us.


cache link (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=4628)

I honestly cannot understand your question. Google has a cached page linking to the site you question, and on that cached page there is a link with the word "fortstjohn" embedded at the end of the URL.

[kunalg]

the problem is that google said that the term "stjohn" is in the link pointing to this page but this term "stjohn" is not in the page and google gives us the same message if the search keyword is present in the title and description of the page.

[Michael Martinez]

the problem is that google said that the term stjohn is in the link pointing to this page but it is in the and google gives us the same message if the search keyword is only in the title and description of this page. page. What do u think in this way google did not misguide us??

It is apparent to me that English is not your native language, and I do apologize for not being able to understand you.

I will go to the other thread to continue this discussion.

[thenetspiders]

Hii Everyone i read all yours comment regarding link: operator if u give space and type any wild card Character result will be different link: &www.mydomain.com different search result