DigitalPoint, Help Solve the Mystery of the @ Operator

[! !]

@




A-Ha, The Mystery Operator Google Does NOT want you to know about

The RE-E-A-L Way to find your sites' unfiltered Backwards Links
:eek:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=@forums.digitalpoint.com

Results 1 - 10 of about 120,000 for @forums.digitalpoint.com. (0.40 seconds)

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http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=link%3Aforums.digitalpoint.com&btnG=Search

Results 1 - 10 of about 3,080 linking to forums.digitalpoint.com. (0.24 seconds)

[a389951l]

:eek: - very interesting...

[digitalpoint]

They are two different queries. Whoever told you that the first query is the real way to find unfiltered back links is very much mistaken.

All you are doing by adding an @ to the beginning of it is bypassing the first page that asks what you want to do with the site (a good number will have links of course, but they could be links anywhere within the domain, and it's not always actually a link. It could just be a string.) What it actually is, is a result of pages that contain the string "forums.digitalpoint.com". The @ isn't indexed, so it's ignored. It's the same as any of these queries:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22forums.digitalpoint.com%22
http://www.google.com/search?q=%forums.digitalpoint.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=!forums.digitalpoint.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=(forums.digitalpoint.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=:forums.digitalpoint.com

Feel free to substitute any non-indexed character you want...

[a389951l]

Ah... Google does not want to leave any clues for us do they.

[Refrozen]

Nope, who ever told you that is wrong. That doesn't look for all links, just any text containing the odmain you enter... Bah.

[minstrel]

you don't need the @ character or any other character... just :url as in http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-41,GGLD:en&q=%3Adigitalpoint%2Ecom

[J.D.]

The @ isn't indexed, so it's ignored. It's the same as any of these queries:

Just to add to this... When the search string is a domain name, Google shows a special page, which is the same as if the info prefix was used (eg: info:www.ibm.com). Adding any ignored character, such as "@", cancels this special page and makes Google look for the phrase following "@".

J.D.

[2003m2003]

The RE-E-A-L Way to find your sites' unfiltered Backwards Links

This was posted and discused several time in different forums....anyway nice topic in the thread.

[! !]

Don't Assume it was Told

These experiments are discovered several ways

The Results with the @ ARE valid from the Search Engine Programming Logic

People interpret differently than C++ or Java

The @ - SERPs are indicative of one possible Programmatic interpretation of links

Using digitalpoint as an example was out of courtesy to the forum this was being posted on

This experiment was done with hundreds of sites - over a period of time before submitting it to be interpreted

Don't forget LINK: is the only measure that many SEOs are using

There ARE other pieces to this puzzle - One brick at a time - nraveling the mystery that is Google


(who says ! ! doesn't resply to posts)