I have read about there being a way to type link:yourwebsite.com and see the back links to the website that you put in that command. When I do this I get website not found. Just wondering what I don't have setup to make that command work.
Google for this operator does not show all the links, and those that are shown do not necessarily the most important. For an overview of the various services for checking backlinks see topic: https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/best-way-to-check-backlinks.1598815/
There needs to be a space between the colon and the URL No - link:yourwebsite.com Yes - link: yourwebsite.com Also try both with and without www link: www.yourwebsite.com
Google disagrees with You. https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/136861?hl=en When you search using an operator, don't add any spaces between the operator and your query. A search for site:nytimes.com will work, but site: nytimes.com will not.
The OP did not ask about site: he asked about link: which I tried before posting. Go and try it for yourself .....
My suggestion would be to sign up for a google webmaster tool account. This will list ALL of your indexed links so no need for the link operator command. It's also more accurate.
A lot of misinformation in this thread, pretty sad how often I see that. The links query doesn't show links and has never done a good job of doing that, why they even have that as a search query is beyond me. Also Webmaster Tools does NOT show all indexed links, there's no rhyme or reason to how they display links there either. One site has over 25k active links that I own and Google shows 1,000 URLs (and only like 3 domains) in Webmaster Tools. To get an idea of links use a backlink checker like ahrefs
Rubbish!!! There SHOULD NOT be a space between the link: and the domain to use any of the Google operators. You spreading BS. Go and read what Google say about this. Without the space --> you get google's small random sample of backlinks ... ie how Google intended it to work. With the space --> you just get pages that have the word "link" and the url on it. This is NOT one of google operator searches. There are NO issues. Sometimes Google small random sample in response to that operator returns no links. It is meaningless and counts for nothing. Do not worry or be concerned about it.
Assuming that you have built these backlinks, the best way to monitor them is to check if you will get any traffic from the sites. And to do this, you must have documented all the backlinks you created manually. A lot of work yah? But it pays, and you can keep these links for use in future. But the fundamental question is, how do you build the backlinks? Will they add juice to your site?
In my point of view Google won’t show backlinks for all the websites if you use link:example.com query and Google Webmaster Tools is always a good idea but me too faced so many issues in checking backlink count using GWT, it won’t show clear count. Trying any Backlink checker tools is also a waste of time since each tool show different backlink counts. So GWT is somewhat better than other two methods but the worst case is, if you try to find the backlink of someone’s website you can’t access that website’s GWT and in that case you have to use Backlink checking Tool.
You need a backlink checking tool like ahrefs.com or majesticseo.com Google does not show link data for link queries. As far as I can remember it's been like that as well.