Order of reported links to authority sites

[Getit]

Can anyone tell me what it means when my site appears as the first incoming link when I do a (link:www.example.com) search at three authority sites in my industry. These are famous sites and when you look at the results in Google for link:www.example.com we rank at the top. Hoping this is something very positive. Our highest page rank is 5

Any comments welcome.

[Brett_Tabke]

Rephrase what you are asking there.

> search at three authority sites in my industry

You mean on Google or at your competitors?

[BigDave]

The order in the results of the link: command means nothing. It only means that you link to them and you are probably early in their current index. The same goes for just about any of the other commands such as allin*:

[Getit]

Rephrase what you are asking there.
> search at three authority sites in my industry

You mean on Google or at your competitors?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Hi Brett,

I mean on Google. At Google I input link:www.famousauthoritysitename.com
and the results show my website listed at the top of 3 very well known authority site in my industry.

[Getit]

Thanks Big Dave.....Are you saying that it is just a coincidence?
I find that hard to believe.

[tedster]

It's just a somewhat random chance that your link (or any link) even shows up at all in the link: operator results. While it's certainly nice to see it there, I agree that you can't read anything more into this. Google only ever shows a small sampling of the links they know about.

[Getit]

Thanks BigDave and tedster for your replies.

I understand that you say the order of the Google results are random or "mean nothing" but I get the same TOP results from:

Yahoo
MSN
AllTheWeb
AltaVista

Do they mean nothing as well?

[tedster]

It could mean that you link is the most recently updated page. It could mean that your linking page is the most recently spidered, even if it hasn't changed. But I think it's unlikely to mean the same thing to four different search engines.

But it DOES mean they have all registered your link. So whatever benefits that conveys, you are already seeing the effect. Next time you add an outbound link to a strong site, keep watch and see what happens.

[Getit]

Thanks BigDave

But my site has been in the top positions for these 3 authority site for 6-12 months though.