Hello DigitalPoint Community: Over the last year, I have been engaged in steady linking building with various high-quality sites for my discussion forum, Beat The GMAT. One thing that has frustrated me consistently was how Google doesn't seem to pick up on my new inbound links. When I type: site:www.beatthegmat.com into the Google search engine, it just lists a few, really old low-ranking pages that link to me. I've waited probably 6 months now for some of my newer links to appear, but it doesn't seem to have happened yet. I'm probably really ignorant about SEO, but shouldn't my inbound link listings be updated every time Google caches an external page that links to me? Also, how long should I expect to wait to see a boost in my inbound link listings/PageRank? Thanks very much for your help! I've been stuck on PR 4 for a long time and I feel like my community is worthy of at least a PR 5!
One additional follow up to my previous post: I'm not just seeing my old inbound links by typing "site:www.beatthegmat.com" into Google. I don't see any of my newer links with Alexa's "incoming links" listing either. Thanks in advance for your help and time!
First you should type link:www.website.com not site:www.website.com to see your links, second google doesnt show most of your links even when you type link:www.website.com to see "most" of your links you need add your website in google webmaster central, then confirm your website and then click on links.. there is also Yahoo site explorer which will show most of your indexed links too.. https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com (good news your website has 12 000 links according to yahoo ) you should get the same number via google webmaster central (www.google.com/webmasters) and no your inbound links are not updated everytime a link gets indexed (if you are talking about the link:www.website.com command) backlinks updates happens from time to time.., but more often than the pr update, once the pr update happens may be ur website will go pr5.. anyway just forget about pr and keep up building links and a strong community. good luck!
site:www.domain.com shows indexed pages not backlinks if you want to see back links you should type link"www.domain.com or "www.domain.com"
Maybe google did not show your latest result for backlinks but I'm sure your have pretty and lot of quality links because you said your site PR is 4..Wait for the backlinks update and PR update as well..
This is what I've been doing. Is this wrong? Does this tell me something else? Yahoo: linkdomain:www.website.com -site:www.website.com
This is the best response to this thread, using google webmaster central to view all inbound links is the best way!
i suspect google do not show all the backlink that they use in calculating PR. they like to keep us guessing on things.
This has been a great help. I have been also wondering why Google seems to have so few backlinks for my site. I have recently started purchasing links in quality directories as well as submitting link requests to related sites. Wondered why Google was not picking up any of those a linkbacks.