Which backlinks REALLY count as backlinks with Google?

I just checked my Google Webmaster Tool stats for one of my websites and it's telling me that I only have 3 backlinks going back to my website when another website is telling me I have far more than that. Does this mean that only 3 of the backlinks to my website are worthy enough to be counted as backlinks by Google? Or are these stats simply inaccurate? Many of the backlinks that I built to my website were through free directories. Is this a bad method for building backlinks?

 

In my opinion Google counts only quality back links.

 

It depends.

First of all, there is some delay. Usually Google Webmaster Central will show new backlinsk within a week or two.

Second, google will often 'wipe the slate clean' when a domain drops. When this happens, they disregard all backlinks aquired before the drop.

Third, google disregards all sorts of links. Links from directories, links from 'bad neighborhoods', no-follow links (although lots of no follow links are beginning to show up there), and reciprocal links are all examples of links that google my ignore.


Google disregards

 

But i have found out that even though google might not show all your backlinks, it still improves your page rank during its review which means though it doesnt list all your back links it appears to recognise them somehow cos how else would it move you from PR1 to 2 if it doesnt like your back links

 

They'll usually show they all that they recognize as appropriate backlinks in google webmaster central.

Are you sure you didn't overlook a few? In some cases, you can go from pr1 to pr2 with a single backlink.

 

I made a lot of backlinks and it shows only 2 on my site

feedurbrain.com

donno why

 

Because that's the score google has quantified all of your backlinks together to be.

You can have a million worthless backlinks, and still have pr0.
You can also have 1 single backlink, and have a pr9.

It's all about getting one way backlinks on high quality, relevant sites with strong PR and low outbound links.

 

I am the same but isnt there a difference between
google links and yahoo links

like seo firefox plugin mentions yahoo links not google
And when selling sites its generally the Yahoo page links that get mentioned

 

Yes, there is a difference. Yahoo is WAAAAYY more lenient when it comes to backlinks.

But if you're worried about SERP placement in Google, then you need to be paying attention to the backlinks that Google credits you for.

 

well, as i always say, we never know what Google counts. Only Do follow links are accepted by it first of all. Secondly other tools will show more number of backlinks since Google considers only quality backlinks. Observe which links are accepted by google and then work on that if you like to aim high on google.

 

Ok so whats the craic with it then
I generally look at the yahoo page links to asses how many links I need
Is this wrong

Just looking at the SERPs for a certain term I will be competting for in a few weeks ( new project) according to checkpagerank.net
The number 1 result has 1296 yahoo links 620 All The Web and Zero google links
?

 

Google almost NEVER shows you all of your backlinks... AND they often show you backlinks that they know about but do not count like NOFOLLOW links and links from URLs known to be under penalty. If you are a tiny site with a handful of backlinks then you might see them all, but other than that it's not likely you'll ever know what Google sees. They don't want you to know because it makes it too easy to reverse engineer their ranking algorithm if you do.

The LINK: operator at Google typically only shows you a small sample of your links. The links listed inside of Google's webmaster tools ALSO typically show only a small sample of your back links... typically it's more than LINK: shows, but usually not even close to an exhaustive list.

If you want a better idea of how many links Google knows about then check Yahoo! Site Explorer using the LINK: command. Though both engines have different pages indexed, if Yahoo! knows about them then it's likely that Google knows about them too since Google is much better at crawling the web than other engines and their index likely contains far more URLs than the other engines.

 

what does nofollow and do follow means ? found it in a lot of places like pauls quality links and stuff liek that

 

I'll respectfully disagree here. While the link command only shows a very small sample, the links in Google Webmaster Tools is fairly accurate, albeit a little slow. given time (2 weeks, max), I've never seen Google Webmaster tools miss a significant backlink. I have seen them ignore backlinks that I wouldn't have expected to help much anyway.

I'll also respectfully disagree regarding the yahoo! site explorer. While they will show you more backlinks, they'll often show backlinks that Google will definitely not count towards Google SERP improvement.

If you are interested in improving your Google SERPs, then it's your Google backlinks you should be analyzing.

If you are interested in improving your Yahoo SERPs, then by all means use the Yahoo site explorer.

 

I'm sorry but even after a month not all of your links will necessarily show up in WMT. It's a sample just like LINK: shows you just more links, but almost never exhaustive. Unlike people here that typically work w/ smaller sites, I SEO a PR7 site that shows 4.7 million backlinks in Yahoo! site explorer. We spend typically between $10-30 million a year with Google on adwords alone. I meet with Google employees every quarter for a few days for quarterly business reviews. People on our SEM team meet with them almost daily on conference calls. I get to talk to their engineers. I was even called by their WMT product manager and engineers for an hour long conference call so that they could get ideas from me about 8-10 months ago about how to improve WMT. So I get a little more info than the average person on forums like these. And trust me when I say, "WMT only provides a sample of your known backlinks." Google has stated this publicly on numerous occasions.

Here is one such reference:

or similarly:

or similarly:

or even better:

If you notice, they even refer to the WMT links listed as a "sampling" in the last example above... In the others "a more comprehensive list" which means more than you'd get w/ LINK: but not comprehensive.

I've heard Cutts and other Googlers' say this in person at Pubcon, and people like John Mu mention it on the Google Help Forums... But hey... We can agree to disagree.

I know that Yahoo! shows links that Yahoo! knows about, but it's probably the most exhaustive list you can get. And if Yahoo! is seeing 500 backlinks to a a page, and WMT is only showing 50, I can bet you that Google knows about almost all of the other 450 links that Yahoo! is showing and Google is not. I would be willing to bet that 70-80% of the links shown at Yahoo! are known about by Google (not necessarily counted... but known about).

 

I think google only counts links in texts not in comment, footer etc..

 

I guess I stand corrected. Very well stated.

My main point was that Google doesn't 'count' all as many of the backlinks as Yahoo shows you. My mistake was in thinking that WMT was a tool could use to help differentiate between links google 'counts' and links they don't.

I thought the reason Google doesn't show ALL links in WMT was because they disregarded ones they don't count. I knew that some 'no-follow' links were showing up in there, but I thought it was a fluke.

Like I said, I've never seen WMT miss a significant backlink.

 

do-follow links count, no-follow links will not count.

 

That is your problem building them thru free directorys. Get some good quality backlinks because if you don't you gonna have a 1000 backlinks with no ranking in the Search engine results pages.

 

Hi there,

Only Do Follow links are counted as back links because when Google crawl, it leaves all the no follow links.