How many backlinks do you REALLY have?

[gregdavidson]

I was just watching this video about how to find the REAL amount of backlinks you have in the search engines and it said to type in the following:

Google: links:http://www.yourdomain.com

Yahoo: linkdomain:http://www.yourdomain.com

Just change yourdomain.com to your own domain. You'll probably find out that you don't have nearly as many backlinks as you thought you did. Many people just type in their domain name and think that they have thousands of backlinks based on the results when that really isn't true.

[MelogKnaj]

This a good tool, but use yahoo if you want to see all your links, google will only show a fraction of them.

[gregdavidson]

Are you sure about that? Or does Google only show the backllinks that really count?

[roym]

The way to find out the backlinks that google is actually currently counting is through their webmaster tools which lists the links. The link: search does not work and returns only a small selection of the links google is counting. My guess is google deliberately crippled that functionality for obvious competition regions. The backlinks google counts appears to be updated (from what I've seen) about twice weekly.

[gregdavidson]

Oh ok. Thank you for clarifying that.

[ARNOLDSCHWARTZ]

thorugh the method you have stated i have roughly 60 backlinks, webmaster tools shows 770, so there is a hige diffrence, prefer using webmaster tools as the source

[Tom__]

Google reports zero backlinks when Yahoo reports 4055

[Dannyboyonline]

I personally use Yahoo to check for backlinks, I have no idea why google shows less, because the pages that don't show in google do have a valid link on them, and the page is indexed by google so... in theory even if they don't show up on google's back link checker, they do count.

[rochow]

I have no idea why google shows less, because the pages that don't show in google do have a valid link on them, and the page is indexed by google so... in theory even if they don't show up on google's back link checker, they do count.

Easy.

Google deliberately crippled that functionality for obvious competition regions

Yet you can see 100% of your links from Google Webmaster after you've verified your site. Basically, its to try and stop people from getting links from the same place that site did. Google is more than happy to show you (the owner of the site) all the backlinks, just not the public.

[Ulquiorra]

It's kind of stupid though, because people can just go over to Yahoo and see them.

[rochow]

It's kind of stupid though, because people can just go over to Yahoo and see them.

Thats just like a BMW. I can go buy a better car (spec wise) for far less, but it doesn't have that badge.

Same with Google. Just because it can be found elsewhere doesn't mean they'll do it themselves. It makes them more exclusive.

[Ulquiorra]

Yeah, but it doesn't end up being useful.

[Promoman]

Go to Google Webmaster Tool

[kg_lew]

google usually has a lot less than yahoo ...

[tomlakqua]

what is the diffrence between this and just typing in yourdomaindotcom in google. I have always used that to check backlinks

[roym]

what is the diffrence between this and just typing in yourdomaindotcom in google. I have always used that to check backlinks

I use that approach as well, to in effect predict what google will count. Basically I think that google only counts (adds to serp/pr) what is listed in the webmaster tools. Where as what google lists for a domain name (assuming it's a full proper, not no follow link) is the most up to date version of what it's found (As in some is not cross-referenced in it's index yet). at least that's my guess.

[willyboy104]

I use many different backlink checkers including
Google webmaster tools
SEO Quake
Yahoo links
IwebTool.
Checkpagerank.

[bigrollerdave]

Inlinks 1 - 100 of about 208,762

[sheds]

Go to Google Webmaster Tool..........

[wisdomtool]

I use Yahoo which shows that I have about 30k but it doesn't really reflect in my Page Rank :)

[DaGuy]

Inlinks: 168 in Yahoo!.
Inlinks: 0 in Google.

[flashgordonweb]

Google doesn't show all of the backlinks to your site from what I've heard. I've done both:

link:http://yourdomainhere.com for Google and Yahoo. Yahoo reveals much more. There are also a bunch of other tools on the net and they seem to come up with numbers closer to Yahoo then Google in terms of the total number of backlinks.

[lordcajen]

my blog is fairly new. Google reports zero, but i have 121 as reported by yahoo.

[PlateFish]

I have far more than I thought... 2950...

But then when I go to the bottom there are 4 pages ... So no, that way of testing for backlinks is rubbish.