I always wonder how backlinks are counted by Google/MSN/Yahoo/Alexa? I can't see any backlinks for my website in google but when i search it on yahoo i get about 7000 So whats the thing? And one more important question. If other blog added you to their blogroll is that links counted? If yes, is it counted per page since it will appear on every blog page they create. or only links inside post are counted as backlinks? Can some expert throw some light?
Google only shows a selection of backlinks to your site. From what I've read on the web, it appears that it only shows backlinks that have a PR greater than 4. Yahoo and MSN on the otherhand show far more (as you've noticed) - whether this is all links that they are aware isn't certain. Another reason for the differences could be that Yahoo and MSN crawl the web and update their indexes quicker - Google seem to update theirs monthly rather than every few days. As to the blogroll links - someone else will know more about that than me . . .
Google counts all the links right they just choose not to show all of them because spammers used to abuse it. And Yahoo will always have a high link count because it ignores nofollow links and lists but doesn't count them when it comes to ranking your page. MSN is the middle of these two listing those that matter to it. Alexa however I have no idea. And yes when you get added to someone's blogroll it counts as a link and it will appear on every blog post, though the SEs will only count the highest PR page as I understand it, the links inside a post are also counted. Thank you
Thanks a lot everyone..I got some nice PR5, PR6 links with similar content blogs of reputation. Hopefully my Pagerank improves in the next google update
And to add on, as long as the links are not tagged with the rel="external nofollow", they will be considered as backlinks
your post is very informative. thanks jus a quick note, i still not sure what makes google links updated so slow. the result are showing the same thing, somewhere 3-6 mths back. its the same 24 links, and the result is very very similar. well, so many seo, posting, forums, link exchange this few months, not even single of it get counted into google links. disapointed with their search result updates. probably they still using those P3 pcs to crawl the web.