How can I check ONLY incoming links?

[teacake23]

I have used the usual test to see my websites link equity, typing - 'link:www.URLhere.com' in the SE's search bar and currently have about 6,500 links on the .co.uk but only half the amount on the .com

Unfortunatlet this link check includes all my internal website links too and I wondered if there is there a way I can check to see only the external sites that are linking to me?

Would be very useful as I would like to contact all external links in an effort to consolidate the link equity to one URL.

[borsan2k]

Hi
Try a search like this:
link:YourDomain.com -site:YourDomain.com

[seobook]

link:www.YourDomain.com -site:YourDomain.com for links at a home page - links from internal pages

linkdomain:www.YourDomain.com -site:YourDomain.com for links at your site - links from internal pages.

[teacake23]

Thanks for the advise seobook and borsan2k.

The linkdomain:www.YourDomain.com works a treat inYahoo(120,000) and MSN(16,743), but I guess these results include my sites pages so if I minus the results from linkdomain:www.YourDomain.com -site:YourDomain.com Yahoo(82,900) and MSN(3,866) I should end up with the total number of external sites linking to me. Is that right?

Also, I can't get anything other than the link:www.YourDomain.com to work in Google, do you have any other tips for Google?

I seem to lost a load of links off Google over the weekend too! On Friday when I submitted this thread I had 6,500 links on the .co.uk and today its only 1,670! Thats one hell of a drop don't you think? :(

[jbgilbert]

The linkdomain: command is not available in Google, plus Google crippled his link reporting a long time ago.

I'd say it's best to use Yahoo and MSN and "assume" Google knows about anything they have plus some more that they may not even list.

[teacake23]

Thanks jbgilbert.

Is the Google link:YourDomain.com toatally worthless?

[jbgilbert]

What I said was that Google does not show you all the backlinks he is aware of -- You'll have to decide on its value to you personally.

[teacake23]

Is there any way of telling how many pages Google has indexed from my site?

[Chris Boggs]

teacake, try the command <site:www.yourdomain.com> in the Google search box. I believe this is the best way...

[teacake23]

Excellent, many thanks Chris.

This seems to work for MSN and Yahoo too, although Yahoo details almost 81K for the co.uk and only 1 for the .com - is this because it treats only one URL as the main one and it has chosen the co.uk?

I am still a little confused about how to monitor the number of links too. Using the advice from seobook detailed earlier in this thread, I can review how many links are linking to my site as a whole (linkdomain:URL). But the link:URL method did not work in Yahoo so I cannot measure the links directed to the home page only, which from an SE point of view, I would have thought was more important!?

Any advise would be much appreciated. :)

[borsan2k]

teacake,
I think you are not using right the "link" command. If you want to see the links pointing only to the homepage you have to use it like this:
link:http://www.YourDomain.com/
or
link:http://www.YourDomain.com/index.html (homepage)

I think you can use the first one, as most people link to the domain( domain.com ), instead of the homepage ( domain.com/index.html )
Hope it helps...

[jewboy]

My vote is for linkdomain in Yahoo. G is very deceptive about showing backlinks. Plus, Yahoo! will tend to order backlinks by relevance. Furthermore, G will only show links coming into the page; Yahoo! will show all coming to the domain.