Does Google intentionally confuse users?

It's no secret that some of Google's search results
are very inaccurate.

For example, when you try to find the number of
backlinks to a site via search term "link: url", and
when similarly with content "site:url", the results
you get for the top rankers are quite ridiculous.

I don't know what these functions are good for
if results are inaccurate. Funny when you try
them in Yahoo, the results actually make sense.

So, is this some sort of mechanism to protect
these sites, or is Google trying to confuse people
and mystify its algorithm?

 

Google stopped showing most links to keep other webmasters from trying to copy the competition.

 

just wondering how you came to this conclusion?

 

I mean it could be true, but why would they care about this?

 

Li, I agree the link and url boolean queries seem not to provide the right data. I also find, though, that Yahoo, does not seem to clean their results, so they can be inflated. The reality is somewhere between the two....

 

Users or webmasters? Most "users" of Google are very happy.

 

Google SE want yo to use GWT

that is all

 

Why would google care about giving SEO's the key to rigging their rankings by telling them which links their algorithm values the most? Are you serious?

Sign up for webmaster tools. Google will show you all the links for your site - you just can't view other websites.