24 replies to this topic

[ggussin]

Hi-

If anyone can advise me on this, I would appreciate it.

I was going to my husband's web site to add links when I discovered that the links are no longer listed by google. When I type link:www.neilburnslaw.com in the google search engine, nothing comes up. This is puzzling since I know that the links were present last spring.

Does anyone have any ideas as to why this occured?

[Jill]

The links are still there, and Google still knows about them, they just choose not to show most links in that command any more for some reason.

But don't worry, it doesn't have anything to do with your particular site, most likely.

Jill

[Griff]

Hi

So would you advise us not to use that Tool (Link:URL)anymore then? If so is there another way for checking for links?

Thanks

Griff

[Jill]

Yes, there's not much reason to use it as it doesn't tell you much.

[BrianR]

Griff - AFAIK, there's no way that you can definitively check the number of backlinks in Google. I use the '+' modifier in front of the domain name which gives you every occurence of your domain on any site. It's not perfect, because some occurences may not be links.

There's also a good Google backlink checking tool at: http://www.digitalpo...ools/backlinks/

What I normally do is also check in Yahoo (linkdomain:yourdomain.com) and AllTheWeb and, between the three, you can get a pretty good overall picture.

Having said that, others may use a different methodology!

BrianR

[Griff]

Cool thanks. Good advice yet again.

[cdgeorge]

I am glad somebody else asked this question because I was about to ask exactly the same thing. We have at least 10 good links to our Spanish property website from the likes of www.andalucia.com , www.192directory.co.uk etc, and I can see they are in place.

But using the link: search facility in Google shows nothing!! Most disconcerting, even though Jill does reassure us that Google picks and chooses.

I also thought this was the reason we were not in the top 30, 40 or even 50+ when doing a common keyword phrase we have optimised for. Now I have to find some other reason.

[nuttakorn]

IMO, in the future google may hide the link for blocking the website who trade, sell links? Do you have any idea? Do you know Google purpose why they are shown the backward link, pagerank? I have heard that google is very care about their user not webmaster.

[ggussin]

This is such an incredibly helpful forum. Thank you! What are back links?

[torka]

Back links, also referred to sometimes as inbound links (or BL or IBL, just to confuse things ), are links from other pages to the page you're looking at. These links can come from other pages within the same site, or they can come from pages on external sites.

Remember, all the SE's index pages, not sites. So links are relative to the page, not to the site as a whole. This is a distinction that people often forget.

--Torka

[cdgeorge]

It would seem that not only are Google not showing any links to my site as mentioned earlier in this discussion, but neither are Yahoo or MSN??? It seems that all three of these search engines are using the same system!

By the way, a useful plugin for the Firefox browser showing Google PageRank, Alexa PageRank and backlinks (if you are lucky enough to have any) can be downloaded from [http://quirk.co.za/searchstatus/]

[BrianR]

Just in case...

CdGeorge - are you aware that the 'link' command over at Yahoo is 'linkdomain:yoursite.com'??

I could be wrong, but I find it hard to believe that, with 10 good backlinks, none of your links are showing in any of the big 3 SEs.

BrianR

[cdgeorge]

Interesting, the linkdomain: option brings up more results but not all of them and is still missing the key websites such as from www.andalucia.com and www.192directory.co.uk which do exist.

I must admit I used the plugin for Firefox to 'show backward links', and I can see that when using Yahoo it refers to http://search.yahoo.com and here uses the link: command.

Nevertheless, the linkdomain: option is not foolproof either but thanks for you help with this.

[cdgeorge]

Let's just deviate a little from my link: problem for now and consider that 'broken'. I have just spent the last hour reading the very lengthy but nevertheless interesting http://www.highranki...?showtopic=9534 post. I am not a professional SEO so from this post would like to ask you all the following:

1. Even though we do not know Google's algorithm, all the SEOs seem sure that quality inbound links is now the way to go. How do you all know this for sure not knowing the algorithm?

2. Also, from the lengthy post mentioned above there was a note on Google checking backlinks are not in turn backlinking to a spam-like or poor quality link system. How would I make sure that the site/directory I ask/submit to is a quality inbound link? And does not itself backlink to poor quality links in turn affecting my own amateur SEO efforts. Any sure way of finding out? I may have already unwittingly submitted my link to one of these sites without knowing so may have to undo this action to help my rankings.

3. Inbound links can be achieved sometimes by linking back to their site if you want it for free. You do indeed get an inbound link by this method, but you to have to link back to them. Can Google distinguish between a one way inbound link and a recipricol link? Are we looking to get one way links to rank well with Google therefore dismissing the recipricol link method?

4. The sandbox effect mentioned so many times; does this simply mean you will be retrieved from a relevant search phrase you know you have optimised your website with - but they may keep you way back on the 10th or 20th page for the time being until you have been checked out or matured?

[easypirates]

The site in question fell below pr4 thats why backlinks weren't shown.