Does the sandboxing effect apply to the inbound links for a page too? For example, I have certain pages where a) my page has an inbound link from a high PR page (e.g. DP forums ) b) the page being linked from has DEFINITELY been indexed, because it shows up in Google, along with my link but the inbound link is not showing up as an inbound link for my page in Google (using link:www.yadada.com). To say nothing of it impacting my PR (though I don't expect that overnight). Is that Google being coy about showing all my inbound links (to stop people reverse-engineering the PR algorithm!) or is it part of the sandbox effect? Because it's darned annoying doing lots of linkbuilding and then having no SE progress to show for it.
Yes. Or rather No. Oh well, here's the deal (roughly): For both links and domains google has an age filter. Links weigh more when they are older. Domains rank better when they are older. Combined they look like what webmasters call 'the sandbox'. As for using google to track backlinks, that's just not going to work. Use yahoo or MSN.
But is that reliable too? I mean, will that reliably show links that Google would also consider valid links. I mean, for a new site of mine, Google shows me as having only ONE link, whereas Yahoo says more than 50! That's quite a difference!
Google doesn't show accurate backlink information. Some times you can get the info from AOL search which sources its data from google.
Since today google-sitemaps supposedly does give an accurate list of inbound links. You could try that. The difference you see between yahoo and google is precisely my point. Since you can check whether the pages yahoo shows you actually link to your site, you can check for yourself which is more accurate.
Not supposed to be an accurate count : http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=2267118&postcount=36
Something dodgy about this tool? It gives me about 50 links to one site of mine, most of which are from some blog, but on pages where I have never posted a comment or anything like that (and indeed, there is no backlink on most of them). On the other hand, there are NO inbound links from some KNOWN sites, in particular, not a single one from DP, even though I have plenty of posts! Seems like maybe the data is old? Also, does this show some trouble Google has with with frequently-changing pages?
thats odd because my links from digitalpoint.com show up but my links from an authority site don't. I'm not really sure how accurate the tool is.
Looks like Google are still working on their "obfuscation algorithm"! Anyway, this thread is ongoing at the link mentioned above, so maybe it's time to move along... m