How long does it take on average for google to realize that a site has linked to my site? I've had some links up for a while now but link:mysite shows nothing.
It depends on how often Google visits page on which your link was placed. Some sites get spidered daily, some very infrequently. As a general rule of thumb the higher the page rank the more frequently the site is spidered but not always. You might watch the fresh dates for page on which your link was placed. Shannon
Even if Google has indexed and processed new/updated pages with links to your site, that does not mean that Google will show them on a link: search. Your best bet is to try and check the cache for the page in question and see if it contains the link. Then you need to determine (assuming the link is dynamic and not straight HTML) if Google can spider/follow the link. The best way to know that is if any other links on the same page (and structured in the same manner as yours) is listed in a link: search. Assuming you cannot confirm that, it's a crap shoot as to whether or not the site is "hoarding PR" or Google just doesn't want to show its cards.