Just interacted with someone who has a site on 1st page of Google for a competitive keyword. And he said that he has done alot of link building over the past 6mths since his site became live. But on Google, I only see 1 backlink. So, the question is, google no longer shows all backlinks? Ok, his domain name is highly relevant to the competitive keyword, but I don't think it is possible to get on 1st page with just ONE backlink, or is it?
Google has never shown all your backlinks when you use the link: command. I think it shows them all (or at least the ones that count) in your webmaster tools control panel. Check Yahoo! Site explorer to find the biggest list of backlinks for a site. IMO, that's oneof the areas where Yahoo! outshines Google. Pinball machines used to only score 1 point at a time, but then some marketing genius figured out that peole played the game more if you scored 10 o 100 points at a time. Now all pinball machines score 100's if not 1000's of point each time you simply hit a bumper. Moral of the story: People like big numbers.
Google webmaster tools shows about 30% of my total links: 1,805 displayed in GWT control panel. Yahoo counts 6,700 but only shows 1000. (About 16% of total links are displayed). Therefore both are deficient when it comes to showing links.
As of today, GWT just increased the links they are showing for my site to a whopping 2,416. (That is a huge increase from 1,805) Basically I'm seeing 240% more links with Google than I will see at Yahoo Site Explorer, where they only show 1000.