If search for "link:www.debatepolitics.com" I get no results. However if I do "link: www.debatepolitics.com" I get 40+. (notice space between colon and domain) I am confused. Any insight on why this is occuring?
With and without http:// it finds the site. If I search for "debatepolitics" it finds 142. At least 80% of those results are sites which I thought were BL. This site is listed in there as well. The index cache is of yesterday.
Yes, there may be 'actual' backlinsk to your site from Google but 'reported' backlinks from Google only get updated once every 2-3 months so on the next backlink update check link:www.debatepolitics.com again and see what you get. At the moment it would appear to be that you have no 'reported' backlinks. How old is your site? This may be able to tell us if it should have backlinsk or not.
I have only had googlebot activity in the last month or so... So I guess I am waiting on a google BL update. *sigh* Thanks!!
Dont worry, it's been a while since the last update so it could be soon and the reported backlinks doesnt have any effect whatsoever on the rank of your site. What is important is your SERPS and neither the PR update or backlink update have any effect on these. They are just interesting to see how well you are doing and it is also good if you have a SEO company and you are reporting PR to your clients.
Without the space, Google interprets that as "find the backlinks to this site" and gives you the usual limited random sample of backlinks. With the space, if I remember correctly, Google interprets that as a search for two search words/terms: "link" (ignoring the colon) and "www.debatepolitics.com" -- and then shows you pages in the index which have both those terms or either one of them. Try a search using ":www.debatepolitics.com" (without the quote marks) versus "www.debatepolitics.com" (with the quote marks).
One of the best ways to see how many BLs you truly have is search Yahoo or alltheweb. I would also say look at the new msn. MSN beta seems to be updating BLs within a day or two. You can also use Mcdars tool and it will show you your google and yahoo BL count.
30 Oct wasn't a BL update though. Google updated, and then reverted to the last months BL if I remember correctly.
They updated again though. I think it was around 23Oct when there was an update(reverted back) and 30Oct was the proper BL update
Leo, any replies you may receive to this question will be just that: pure guesses. There's really no point in even asking the question any more, let alone speculating as to an answer. It's much like the lottery: Pick any date from tomorrow to 12 months from now and you probably have about as much chance as the next guy at being right.
I think BL updates are not important anymore. Try allinanchor: command. When G spiders new links it will go up and the site will follow in the SERPs. BL update is only for one's satisfaction to see more results for link: command.
Weirfire, are you saying here that you believe Google factors in the weight of newly created inbound links to ones site in the rankings in perhaps a few days or so, but then simply only reports that information (in the form of the PR and backlink update) every few months? As a more direct question, how long do you (or anyone here) think it takes for Google to apply the weight of new links pointing to a site, assuming all sites involved are spidered reasonably frequently? If I get 10 good quality links pointing to my site today, and each site is spidered at least a few times a week, can I expect to see that impact (in a low-competitive niche) in a few days, few weeks, few months?