link: command results question

Hey,

I've got a question about the MSN link: command results for one of my websites - when I do link:www.examplesite.com, I am getting less results than with link:examplesite.com - I was randomly going through these, and while a couple of the "extra" links are to "examplesite.com," there are a significant number that clearly include the www. - anyone know why this is going on, whether I'm getting credit for the links, etc?

 

I've seen that too before. To me it just seems that the MSN link results vary quite a bit over time and by searching different ways. Sometimes I search using the link: functions and everything looks normal, and other times it's way out of wack.

Getting "credit" for the link is really search engine specific and even if the links show up in the link: search, you never know how that particular seach engine is using those links to rank your site. And in the case of Google, most of your links won't show up in the link: search even though they are obviously aware of them.

I usually use yahoo to get link counts because they seem to be the most accurate when it comes to that.

 

You are asking for the number of links to domain.com versus www.domain.com. Technically, these are two totally different websites. (short answer)

BTW, you probably want to use a 301 redirect to send one to the other to keep little "problems" from arising with the different SEs.