Hi all I am new in this forum. I have a question. when a link is counted as a back link by the google? when we search backlinks of any site by this tool " link:sitename.com " then we find very few links as a result. why? I will be thankful to you if you can give the answer. Thanks
Welcome , The link is counted by google when its spiders can index it Google won't tell you all your backlinks , go to yahoo explorer , it will help you
All indexed links are counted by Google. link:sitename.com doesn't show all backlinks which Google is aware of. The reason is unknown. Probably to avoid webmasters duplicating your link profile (which is good). You can use Yahoo Site Explorer to check your competors' backlinks or Google Webmaster Tools to check your own backlinks.
Some others have already suggested Yahoo Explorer but I highly recommend Google's Webmaster -- go straight to the source. It shows a truer view of your Google backlinks and provides valuable information on anchor text that links to your site. I can see many links that you cannot see with query "link:" query. Good luck!
Actually, Google Webmaster Tools is the only way to really see how many backlinks you have. Matt Cutts stated that the link:domain.com doesn't return the proper number. You should definitely install Webmaster Tools.
Google only shows around 1% of the total backlinks pointing to your website. Yahoo! Site Explorer is a better option, although it still doesn't show all of your links either.
Google will never tell you even sometimes Yahoo's numbers are not correct I would spend my time on getting backlinks instead of counting them.