How Long Until a Link Shows in the Backlink Search?

Basics of backlinks.

[alphacooler]

How much time passes between the point when another site ads my link to when it shows up with "link:www.example.com" on G?

Obviously it depends on how frequently the site linking to me is crawled by G but there must be some sort of other delay. Does G only update backlinks during specific times? How often does this occur?

One of my new sites only shows 6 external links while I have verified over 50 by visiting the sites linking to me(I am presuming they don't have a nofollow on my links)...and I am starting to get a bit worried.

Thanks everyone!

[edited by: ciml at 3:21 pm (utc) on April 1, 2005]
[edit reason] Examplified [/edit]

[alphacooler]

bump

[robotsdobetter]

Does G only update backlinks during specific times? How often does this occur?

Google updates backlinks at specific times, there is no way to know for sure when they will update it, but that does not mean Google don't already know that the links are there. Also Google doesn't show all of your backlinks, so you may want to use other search engines to search for your backlinks.

[alphacooler]

robotsdobetter,

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate it. I have been using Alltheweb to check my backlinks as well, this should show me all of them even lower than PR4 right?

Ok, so G updates backlinks during specific periods...about how often does this (generally) occur? Once a month or so?

[PatrickDeese]

about how often does this (generally) occur? Once a month or so?

More like every 2-3 months. However, if a page that has a link to your site is showing the link in Google cache, it is being counted in your backlinks, even if it doesn't show up in the link: command.

[alphacooler]

2-3 months...man. That is rough. I have a couple of new sites that have been showing a good rate of backlink procurement in a short period of time. Kinda demoralizing to know that this will only help my SERPs in 2-3mo's time.

Thanks for your response. If anyone else has anything to add I would really appreciate it.

[robotsdobetter]

Kinda demoralizing to know that this will only help my SERPs in 2-3mo's time.

That's not necessary true. Even though they may not show the most up to date backlinks, it does not mean they are not already using that to rank sites. It's just like Page Rank, what they show us in the toolbar is really not up to date, but they are still using the most current Page Rank to rank things.

[Daretodream]

So what your saying is...if I can do a search on my keywords and pages come up with my link, these pages will be counted? My links are higher then my own website. I can't find my site, my links are out ranking me.

[robotsdobetter]

So what your saying is...if I can do a search on my keywords and pages come up with my link, these pages will be counted?

IF the link is showing in Google's cache of the site, it is very likely that they are already counted the backlink to your site.

[alphacooler]

It seems alltheweb shows backlinks much, much faster than google. Is this actually the case?

[alphacooler]

Alltheweb just upped my backlinks again, after only 1 week. This is very odd? Does it usually work this fast on alltheweb (1-3weeks) and (1-3mo's)on google?

[g1smd]

>> 2-3 months...man. That is rough.

That is the time it takes to appear in a list you can look at. They likely factor them into the search results many weeks before that.

>> Kinda demoralizing to know that this will only help my SERPs in 2-3mo's time.

They might already be helping. See above. What they display is disconnected from what they are actually using.

[Marval]

alphacooler - backlinks displayed on Google's link: command no longer meet any PR threshold - I think you mentioned the old PR4 limit - it no longer applies - was changed when they went to not showing most of your backlinks - and from what I normally see the most important backlinks never show up in the link: query

[alphacooler]

marval, Gotcha. Thanks for that.

Now can you explain the link disparity between the major engines: Here are some numbers:

Engine Count
Google 17
Yahoo 137
MSN 152
Teoma 0

I.e...what is going on with G? Are they just much slower than the others to show links, OR do they just have REALLY stringent filters?

[beren]

Nah, it's not that they're slow. They just don't show many.

The numbers you give are a not atypical ratio. MSN almost always shows the most, followed by Yahoo, with Google by far the least.

[Emmett]

So what your saying is...if I can do a search on my keywords and pages come up with my link, these pages will be counted? My links are higher then my own website. I can't find my site, my links are out ranking me.

If you haven't already you might want to check for a duplicate content penalty. Try adding filter=0 to your query. I had the same problem before and it turned out that a page that was 302'ing to mine was listed as a copy of my homepage and I got unranked for a while.

[Marval]

alphacooler - as far as the disparity, Google changed the way they display backlinks about a year ago on purpose (and at the suggestion of a member here) to discourage the purchase of links for ranking purposes by taking away the tool that most people had used for some time to check their backlinks - they simply added in some sort of filtering process that has never really been investigated here to determine what and how it works - but was definitely confirmed by Google's representative here when it happened.
As far as the other engines difference in links - the main thing to keep in mind is that they all spider sites a little differently and some may have not spidered some of your linking partners - wheras others are a little quicker and more thorough