Which backlink checker is "correct"?

I've tested one site for backlinks and got results:
Backlink Watch: 5487
iwebtool: 280

What is ment as backlink anyway? Uniqe backlink? 100 links from one site (e.g. forum) is 100 backlinks or one backlink?

 

Glad you asked this! Im very confused lol.

Heres my results
iwebtool: 33
backlink watch 396

Bit of a difference... lol

Also whats the difference between external and internal links?

 

Errata is pretty standard on these tools the results vary so much its difficult to say which is accurate and which is in-accurate
They are both are well used popular tools but which is the accurate one ?

 

www.yahoo.com with linkdomain: operator... It show the most accurate number of backlinks..

p.l.u.r.

 

External links point to other sites, internal links point to inner pages of the same site. It is not clear if both external and internal links are ment as outbound (OBL) links in Backlinkwatch tool.

 

No only external links are known as outbound links

 

Even Google show some number using ( link : sitename.com ) but you will notice both(yahoo and Google) have different number...

Each searchengine uses their own database... and shows their respective results.
To get exact number of IBL is difficult although you can use some linkchecker tool, but they may not show the exact number.

 

Check out Yahoo site explorer, that will give you most accurate results. You need a yahoo ID and password to access the site.

 

outbound links are links from your site, to another site.
external links are links from another site to your site
internal links are links from pages within your site to other pages within your site.

 

If you want to check the backlinks to your site,http://www.yahoo.com/ is the way to go!

 

All are correct ... ata least in their own serach engine's perspective

Google, Yahoo and MSN uses their own backlinks as one of their calculation to display and tabulate SERP. Therefore, it depends on which SE you are talking about.

 

Well, google doesn't show the links it counts. Yahoo and MSN are generally used to check what links google likely knows about.

 

You can use www.urltrends.com for backlink check

 

That's probably based on either Yahoo or MSN anyhow.

 

get the Search Status extension for Firefox .. it'll help with backlink checking ..

 

just type on yahoo:
linkdomain:domainname.com -site:domainname.com

 

Each search engine shows its own set of backlinks. Use this tool http://www.google-page-rank.net/ to check for backlinks on google, yahoo, msn, alltheweb and altavista at one time. This tool is a time saver.

 

This is what confuses me: Backlinks for me are links on other sites pointing to my site. What this have with search engines? # of backlinks is fixed at some particular moment, so why so different results?

OK, different interpretation. I guess 5,000 links from signatures from one forum don't have the same weight as 5,000 links on many different sites. But I know that. If I have 10 apples, 5 good and 5 bad, I still have them 10, not 5.

 

Every engine has its own way to determine the links. Not all engines may crawl all places which link to you. Some may, some may not. Yahoo is generally the best if you want an authority source on your backlinks. Google isn't for backlink purposes because it never truly shows the total amount you have.

If all engines showed the same results, why would there be so many of them...