My site has been operational for 3-4 years, and have 50.000+ daily visitors (2 mill+ hits). When I search google for "link:mysite.com -site:mysite.com", I find very few links (about 10). I know from googleAlert that I get more backlinks than that every week. I also know that searching Yahoo will get more than 1000 external links. Is "link:xxxx" reliable? Could there be other reasons for missing links?
There are several references within this forum showing that Google "link:" search only shows a portion of the links pointing to a given url. Placing a limiter like "- site:mysite.com" only reduces the number of returns which could explain why you are not seeing the links you desire. Within many of those same threads on this forum most state to switch to Yahoo! and search similar to "linkdomain:mysite.com -domain:mysite.com" to see how many links point to yours. Hope this helps...