Why is it so much tougher to get backlinks in Google...over MSN and Yahoo? Are there ways to determine which backlinks are best to go after that will benefit Google?
1. Google intentionally doesn't report all the backlinks it knows about for your pages 2. Google probably has more filters in place to discount certain types of backlinks than MSN and Yahoo
Google will favour links from quality sites that are related to your site without being a direct competitor from what I've heard. Check the pr of the homepage of the site and the page where you want a link from and that the page has been cached by Google recently. Even though the pr value is old, it may give some indication of the importance of the page. Google's stricter criteria makes it all the more important to avoid general links pages with penis enlargement links, tonnes of links, too many links and not enough content, etc.