And right now MSN doesn't seem to have all the silly filters that the others have. Firefox has a nice feature you can install to check all 3 SEs for your inbound links.
It's true that in Google link:URL is pretty much useless but my point was doing a link: query in MSN won't necessarily tell you whether that backlink is counting anywhere else but MSN. What if the linking page is banned in Google, as an extreme example. You can use various other methods to locate backlinks in Google: see Google Advanced Search Operators.
http://www.googleguide.com/understanding_results.html gr8 find...thanks for sharing. This really breaks it down for you...good info
The google backlink query command is crippled to throw SEO's off-track. I personally use both Yahoo and Google backlinks to arrive at any conclusion about backlinks to a site. Advanced operators liks "+", "inurl", "site:" do help, but they are not always accurate.
They are all unreliable. That is why I have a spread sheet that I use to keep tack of all the places I have submitted to and who has actually linked back to me.
Isn't that really time consuming. Maybe you should look at programs that manage and police your link trading relationships?
Not only that, you may have people linking to you that you didn't request or submit to. Would be nice to know those. say - kinda off topic, but in yahoo, what is the command to see what pages they have cached of your site. I know in google it's site:domain but not sure if it's different in yahoo
Yahoo...link:http://www.yourdomain.com or just go here and enter your site and some competition http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/default.htm
I am insane I know but I have had success with my madness. I actually enjoy keeping track of the placess that have linked to my sites.