Why is it that when I use the Google toolbar to check our backlinks only a couple dozen show up when I know for a fact that we have hundreds (if not more) floating around on relevant, recognized sites?
What a bizarre thing to say - is it a joke? Actually google has a policy of not showing all backlinks. It shows most backlinks in Webmaster Tools, but even there it makes no commitment to show more than what it calls a 'sampling' of links
Google does recognize all sorts of backlinks. It's just that they are shy to show some of them in your link : domain query because they only show links that have importance in their index and while some are not, they remain to be part of why a site ranks for its keywords. Google toys up with the system only they know.
No, but also I don't know if this is true/accurate or whatever, I believe I've read this in "SEO Secrets v1.4" by Glenn Murray.
Google do count most backlinks you do have but decide to show much less when do search with link: operator in Google. In my opinion, Google just do not want webmaster to see all links, unless you are site owner and can verify so you can see all your links in Google webmaster tools.
wow, how thoughtful of them, protecting our efforts! Like people are stupid, if google won't show your site's backlinks to your competition, they can just go and use yahoo site explorer
links onpages that have not been indexed by google dont count. links on pages that have duplicate content also dont count.
Google have certainly been making it more and more difficult to obtain decent back link information lately, there are good reasons for this, it used to be possible to locate almost all the back links for a competitor then request links from the same sources, by making it harder to locate this information it makes it a little bit harder to simply go after your competitions links.
Google doesn't always show all of your backlinks and if you want to check the backlinks of your site, then check the yahoo site explorer, which is more accurate. This is not true.
Google show backlink only form those sites which are highly relevant, but I always confuse, my one site received backlink form where more then 500 links present, but PR was 3, nobady can accuratly say what exactly google using to show backlinks.
The first answer in this thread that was accurate and not containing misinformation.....to a point....Google will not show "most of your backlinks" --nobody will. I have 1,372 External Links (what Google calls backlinks or inbound links) counted in Google Webmaster Tools (GWT). This is several hundred MORE than what I can see at Yahoo (only 1000 are viewable at any one time). Of those Externals at GWT, many of them are PR 1, PR 2, and PR 3. Many of the counted links are No Follow (but have highly relevant anchor text, so Google still counts them as RELEVANT and uses them in SERP algorithm)
Excuse me? What 'misinformation' do you think my answer contained? I said Actually google has a policy of not showing all backlinks. It shows most backlinks in Webmaster Tools, but even there it makes no commitment to show more than what it calls a 'sampling' of links There is NO misinformation there.
when you say to an english-speaking person: "..It shows most backlinks..", it looks like you were saying "It shows most of the backlinks", which it does not. I have 5,588 total links (per YSE) GWT shows 1,376 of them. That is about 1/4 of the links. That is the most displayed, compared to YSE: YSE displays 1,000 (about 1/6 of the total links) What you MEANT TO SAY: "[GWT] shows the biggest percentage of External Links (backlinks), compared to YSE, but still only displays a small fraction of the total Links possible.
Google doesn't show all your backlinks. Because if they did it would be too easy to figure out how their ranking algorithm works and too easy to unrank someone by going after his backlinks.
Don't you DARE tell me what I meant to say, you pompous eejit. From webmaster tools you can download a data file of MOST of your external links, but not necessarily all I quote from Google "We do limit the amount of data you can download for each type of link (for instance, you can currently download up to one million external links). Google knows about more links than the total we show, but the overall fraction of links we show is much, much larger than the link: command currently offers." http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/02/discover-your-links.html
I don't think anyone really knows for sure 100% exactly why Google chooses to show the banklinks they do.