Why are their such differences between Google links and engines?

Google results for link:www.yourdomain.com are completely different - Why?

[jeremymgp]

Hi everyone,

In Google my main competitor has 10000 unique visitors a day and 3500 backlinks, most of which are internal, and as I get about 250 new links every month the math tells me I'll have a similar number of backlinks in about a year, which is wonderful.

However, in other search engines such as Altavista and AlltheWeb my main competitor has around 40,000 backlinks, many of which are external, and my site's link progress is very slow. At the moment I am building content and obtaining links on sites that link to my competitor based on Google's results, but I feel that it may well be the less encouraging results from other engines that are more accurate, as my main competitor has an old site with a big reputation. Any comments as to why there are such differences and possible strategies much appreciated,

many thanks,

Jeremy

[vitaplease]

Every search engine shows different backlink results.

Google shows more internal links and has a cut-off at about Pagerank4

IMO, Alltheweb eg. shows links to all your sites pages.
(strange I saw a drop in the absolute number they are showing at this moment compared to january this year).

and as I get about 250 new links every month..

If these are external and of good quality, you are doing very well..

[jeremymgp]

Of course, the cutoff at Pagerank 4. Now I can appreciate this even more, as it lets me spend my time profitably getting good quality links instead of stressing about thousands of small sites as well,

thx for your input,

Jeremy