279 replies to this topic

[tomsk]

Picked up a lot of backlinks overnight, anybody else noticed backlings being picked up?

[ndawkins]

No, in fact the opposite. I just purchased some text links from Text Link Ads -- very relevant sites that I thought would do me a lot of good. Google does not seem to see the links. Does anyone khow long it takes for Google to pick up new links?

[Scottie]

You can never say for sure.

Are these relevant links sending you traffic?

[tomsk]

Scottie too early to tell about the increase in traffic but I hope so,

I thought all the Americans would be to stuffed with food and wine to post today!

[Leann_Pass]

I saw the BL change on some of the sites I deal with. You may find it interesting that some of the back links that were added are from pages that no longer exist.

BL updates are just as useless as they have been for the last several months!

Leann

[Connie]

It was reported a SEW that there was a BL update yesterday. Mine dropped by 10 some one else reported a gain of 10. Guess they got mine.

I use the API at digitaltpoint to check so wasn't able to check until today. I should have had more, but on the other hand maybe Google devalued some of the existing links. Or maybe Google is just trying to keep us confused. Google surely wouldn't do any thing that sneaky would she?

Yes Google is female. I read that somewhere. Maybe in this forum. I don't remember but all the reasons seemed to be valid to me.

[Debra]

I don't think back-link updates are useless, on the contrary. When they happen we're assured of a new post in the link building thread so that's a plus.

[leadegroot]

Bah, the only time I look at the google link: command is by accident (No, darn it, I will break this habit and look at linkdomain: on Yahoo instead! )
The link: command is broken and there's no point looking at it; it doesn't matter what Google displays publicly, it matters what Google knows internally, and they don't tell us that.

If you want to know who links to you, look at yahoo.
If you want to know if Google has spotted a particular link yet, generate a SERP including the page containing that link and then check the cache to see if you're in there.

When I know there are over 170 backlinks in Google to site X, and Google reports 3 - I take the hint and stop using the broken command.
</rant>

[Debra]

The link: command is broken and there's no point looking at it

A Google representative posted in the SEW forum recently and commented publically about the backlink command. It's a good read and explains why they show what they do - or don't.

It's the 7th post down and starts like this:

Google doesn't return all backlinks in response to a link: command. In the ancient days, it was because there was a finite amount of storage space on the machines that served link: requests. So we only kept the backlinks for the top N pages. Later as we moved to a different indexing system, we kept backlinks for the top M% of pages. This was helpful for important pages, but it meant that Mom and Pop sites with lower PageRank wouldn't have as good a chance to see their backlinks

[leadegroot]

I've read that - I'm not sure that I believe it; how are they determining the best results for every conceivable search if they dont store the backlinks? - but it doesn't matter that much *why* they aren't available, it really only matters that we recognise that the command is not useful.

[Connie]

leadegroot

    I've read that - I'm not sure that I believe it; how are they determining the best results for every conceivable search if they don't store the backlinks? -

I did not understand Google to say they did not store all back links. Only that they did not display all backlinks.

but it doesn't matter that much *why* they aren't available, it really only matters that we recognize that the command is not useful

Agreed. By the way I don't believe back links have anything to do with the relvancy of the sites returned. A lot of back links has nothing to do with relevancy.

[leadegroot]

did not understand Google to say they did not store all back links. Only that they did not display all backlinks.

True, true, I did over interpret a tad, didn't I?
But it leaves the answer as un-useful.
I understood that Google *used to* show all the backlinks? (or was I just naive a few years ago? )

Agreed. By the way I don't believe back links have anything to do with the relvancy of the sites returned. A lot of back links has nothing to do with relevancy.

Its interesting to try and figure out what the heck they are doing, isn't it?
They are trying to give more weight to more relevant back links, and I think their algos are increasingly successful.

[Hungryfish]

As i stated in a previous thread regarding "tools". I find a number of ways in combination to survey a site for "Links" using these:

Google
Link: sitename.com --> not to accurate
allintext:sitename.com
"sitename.com" -site:www.sitename.com --> this is very interesting

Yahoo
linkdomain:sitename.com -->still IMO the most accurate

MSN
link:sitename.com -->getting close to Yahoo

for you tool buffs,these work great too!
linksurvey
SeoElite
Excel

enjoy

[Debra]

There are a handful of free ones -

http://www.uptimebot.com/

http://www.gorank.com/

http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

http://www.webmaster...y-checker.shtml

[Katok]

Hello All!

Can anybody provide reliable information on what counts as a Google's backwards link? I mean, I have probably several dozen quality links already pointing to my site, but none of them appears in Google so far. By quality I mean pages with some PR (3-5), which are indexable by Google - as evidenced by its cache, and with links Google CAN follow (no ? or = in url). One of those is a link in Anthony Parson's directory (thanks, Anthony!), which certainly looks good to me (PR of 5, plus all the above characteristics), but maybe not so to Google, since it doesn't show as a backwards link ;-\

The question is - what is a backwards link to Google? And even if some link doesn't show in this SE, does it still count?

For the record - my homepage has been indexed by Google, but other pages have not.

Many thanks in advance,
Katok