I've been submitting my site to a bunch of directories and also commenting on some do-follow blog posts recently, but no matter which online tool I use, the number of backlinks to my site always shows up as 0. My question - how long does it for these backlinks to start showing up?
Backlinks may never show up in the regular Google backlink check, but if you signup to Google's webmaster tools you can view all your backlinks. Yahoo's backlink check typically shows all of your links and can take 3 days to 2 weeks to show up.
The time needed for backlinks to show up depends how quickly they are indexed. This could vary quite a bit, depending on the bot activity of any given site. Submit to new directories as they are released (see my sig). They have few listings and your links get indexed very quickly. I check backlinks with Yahoo Site Explorer. More links show up with Yahoo then Google Webmaster Tools. A combination of the both should be good.
I don't know. With yahoo they show up quick. Google sandboxes them. With yahoo I have over 5,000 and on google 82. Big difference.
Yah, don't use Google's link: tool.... Here are a few posts of mine that have a list of tons of tools for checking your backlinks. How To Check How Many Backlinks Your Site Has How To Check How Many Backlinks Your Site Has - Part 2 Directory links may not show up right away.... it depends on how often google crawls the site, and how often the directory owner actually adds new links to the site....
Thanks guys for your input- I'll try some of the tools you guys mentioned. Yea what's up with Google's backlink checker? I searched for link:mysite.com for a semi popular site and it only showed like 3 links.