Seems like the Google rep at the Search Engine Strategies 2004 Conference & Expo in Stockholm yesterday noted the following. Q: What is up with the Google link: command? A: Google says they are not reporting all your links back to your site. So think before using it. You can read this over at the http://www.seroundtable.com blog. Check out Oct 27th and the entry called Link Building Basics.
Minstrel: I realize we all know this. I posted it because to my knowledge this is the first time Google has commented on this issue.
I don't think that was Google commenting; I think it was someone else claiming that "Google says" this. But either way, whether they've publicly stated it previously or not doesn't alter the fact that it's been pretty obvious for a very long time. I don't think the link: syntax EVER showed all backlinks to a site -- it was always a selected sample -- lately, it's an even smaller and less coherent sample.
I'm not seeing any commenting on this from Google's side. The Google link command is useless, the end. Check your (and your competitors) backlinks at Yahoo.
Who Links To You? Some words, when followed by a colon, have special meanings to Google. One such word for Google is the link: operator. The query link:siteURL shows you all the pages that point to that URL. For example, link:www.google.com will show you all the pages that point to Google's home page. You cannot combine a link: search with a regular keyword search. http://www.google.com/help/features.html maybe they should revise that
That might not be a bad idea... The moral of the story: Don't believe everything you read... even if it comes from Google
mxlabs: There is no orginal document, this was at a conference. minstrel: As already noted to your first post I am aware that most people realize that Googles link: command is not showing all the backlinks. Again it was not posted with the attempt to inform people of this but to note that Google has come out and stated it. Percept: I agree, Yahoo's link: and linkdomain: is the best way to check to see what number of links you have.
Make sure to use linkdomain:url.com -site:url.com - it provides the most relevant results in my experience.
Just use Yahoo, its more accurate. One of the Google engineers told me personally at SES in San Jose that the Google command only shows a "sample" of the links that point to your site. The link: command at Google is worthless. If you want to know where your competition's links are coming from, get Optilink and query Yahoo for your competition's links. If you have the Page Rank upgrade, it will show you the page rank of all your competitors links according to Yahoo as well as their page title. Using this information is very handy when developing link campaigns.
Except Google didn't. Someone at a conference said "Google says". Or at least that's what your cited source indicates: It looks to me like those are Thomas Bindl's words. It doesn't seem very likely that a Google rep would answer questions with "Google says"...
minstrel: Yes I asked Barry this. Barry says that the Google spokesperson was asked but didn't agree the question. I am not sure yet but it may very well be that the Google spokesperson didn't say this and this may of been a Q&A answer from Thomas Bindl as you pointed out. There is a pretty good chance I misunderstood the SE Roundup post.
Minstrel, I said they said that Magnus, the Google representative at the conference in Sweden, said that Google does not recommend you look to seriously at the link command. I then drilled Magnus later in a different session. Where I asked him, something to the affect of...Why does Google bother updating the link count when you told us yesterday that it does not reflect much of anything? He responded in a very diplomatic fashion, which is really not worth repeating because it didn't help at all. Danny Sullivan then backed me up and said that if they (Google) is going to provide this link command, then they should make sure it reports ALL links to one's page. Otherwise take away the command, it is not useful and a waste of our time. Hope this helps.
I strongly feel that if you (Google or any other search engine) are providing any service/command (like the link: or the PR), they should ensure that it returns useful and up-to-date information. If for some reason they cannot ensure this then they should simply take away that serivce/command. So many people wait so anxiously for the PR update and the backlink update... but is it worth it? IMO it is *not* because the information provided is not current.
I guess my point is that by now we all pretty much know how useless "link:" is and most people have stopped using it. Why do we need Google or anyone else to "confirm" that? We just don't use it... whether Google "confirms" it or not doesn't change anything. If we learned that the toolbar PR was a completely erroneous number (instead of just an out-dated number), we'd stop using it pretty quickly as a source of information about web pages in the Google index -- to an extent, maybe that's what Google wants and what they are already doing. I suspect it's there either because it's a holdover that Google has abandoned or deliberately rendered useless and/or because, like the toolbar PR graph, it is a way to highlight to webmasters that "you're going to have to work harder than that to manipulate Google now".
That was not the attitude at all. Most of the people at the conference did not know the link command is useless. Be well.
That surprises me... I would have thought people attending that sort of conference would have been more aware of important issues and trends...
Most are marketers, not SEOs - to be honest. Of course you got many SEOs and forum goers. But many are plain old marketers these days.
minstrel: While you and most SEOers know that the link: command is not reporting the correct number of blacklinks the point is that our customers don't know this. They go to Google and they read "The query link:siteURL shows you all the pages that point to that URL. For example, link:www*google.com will show you all the pages that point to Google's home page" and then we have to explain to them that what Google says about there link command is not correct. Anyone that has dealt with this would be happy to get a quote from Google stating the truth on the matter.