@ A-Ha, The Mystery Operator Google Does NOT want you to know about The RE-E-A-L Way to find your sites' unfiltered Backwards Links http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=@forums.digitalpoint.com ___________________________________________________ http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=link:forums.digitalpoint.com&btnG=Search
They are two different queries. Whoever told you that the first query is the real way to find unfiltered back links is very much mistaken. All you are doing by adding an @ to the beginning of it is bypassing the first page that asks what you want to do with the site (a good number will have links of course, but they could be links anywhere within the domain, and it's not always actually a link. It could just be a string.) What it actually is, is a result of pages that contain the string "forums.digitalpoint.com". The @ isn't indexed, so it's ignored. It's the same as any of these queries: http://www.google.com/search?q="forums.digitalpoint.com" http://www.google.com/search?q=%forums.digitalpoint.com http://www.google.com/search?q=!forums.digitalpoint.com http://www.google.com/search?q=(forums.digitalpoint.com http://www.google.com/search?q=:forums.digitalpoint.com Feel free to substitute any non-indexed character you want...
Nope, who ever told you that is wrong. That doesn't look for all links, just any text containing the odmain you enter... Bah.
you don't need the @ character or any other character... just :url as in http://www.google.com/search?source...GGLD,GGLD:2004-41,GGLD:en&q=:digitalpoint.com
Just to add to this... When the search string is a domain name, Google shows a special page, which is the same as if the info prefix was used (eg: info:www.ibm.com). Adding any ignored character, such as "@", cancels this special page and makes Google look for the phrase following "@". J.D.
Don't Assume it was Told These experiments are discovered several ways The Results with the @ ARE valid from the Search Engine Programming Logic People interpret differently than C++ or Java The @ - SERPs are indicative of one possible Programmatic interpretation of links Using digitalpoint as an example was out of courtesy to the forum this was being posted on This experiment was done with hundreds of sites - over a period of time before submitting it to be interpreted Don't forget LINK: is the only measure that many SEOs are using There ARE other pieces to this puzzle - One brick at a time - nraveling the mystery that is Google (who says ! ! doesn't resply to posts)