Do all links to your site count as backlinks?

Just wondering if any link counts as a backlink or not please as I thought the number of backlinks to me seems to be staying the same even though I have been swapping links with quite a few related sites in the past 2-3 weeks..... maybe it just take a while for them to get registered as such?

Many thanks in advance,
SHARKTICUS

 

Some links are 'nofollow' meaning Google don't use them to crawl and they can't confer any PR benefit to the destination pages. These are typically links in blog comments or very popular member-editable sites like Wikipedia, although not normally forums. It's open to much debate about whether Yahoo and MSN value these nofollow links or not.

If you're checking your links with Google they do take a while to appear because the link: operator is only updated a few times a year. Try checking on Yahoo instead.

 

Confusingly enough google does report on the rel-no-follow links in their webmaster tool (also known as google sitemap) as though they actually counted. Matt Cutts warned, with good reason I think, that a lot of links get reported (though with a time-lag as CountryBoy noted) - but don't all weigh equally. What he meant was, I think, some don't weigh in at all. The rel-no-followed links are one example. Links from spammy pages with low pr can't weigh in much either.

 

Thanks for the replies, I checked on here:

http://backlinkwatch.com/

At least I seem to have maybe one more link since the other day!

Thanks again,
SHARKTICUS

 

Actually no all links are not considered as backlinks, some links have nofollow value...

 

Yea google likes one way links better than link exchange.

 

There is a good free ebook (150+ pages) about how the various major engines behave. Please write to me if you want it.

 

Thanks for the replies, much appreciated. I keep learning more and more every day, now just to finish my articles and start driving that traffic!

Cheers,
SHARKTICUS