Google's time to note a backlink to a page

time to note a backlink in google and other search engines

[dgrati]

Situation:

I have a website: www.example.com

In this site I have a page: www.example.com/page.html

I get a backlink from another site to page.html. Let's call the "another site" www.linking-partner.com.

Assume no hanky pankies, no link farms, no bad neighborhoods.

Question:
In your experience, how long before the following query in Google shows linking-partner.com in the SERPs?

link:http://www.example.com/page.html

Question is specifically for Google and not Yahoo.

Generally speaking, how long does it take for Google to recognize a backlink to a specific page? I'm assuming that as soon as the back link is "noted" somehow in Google, it appears in the "link:" query. This assumption could be false.

Thanks guys.

[tedster]

As I believe you suspected, the assumption is false -- unfortunately. The link: operator in Google only reports on a sampling of links. Because the Google algorithm is quite sensitive to links, in my opinion, they have chosen to make reverse-engineering more difficult by not disclosing all the backlinks that they have indexed for a page or domain.

[kaybarella]

and how long it takes the backlink to be noted depends on how frequently G spiders link-partner.com (and how frequently it crawls the page that your link is on)

even when the page is spidered, it might not follow the link at that time.

so a popular site might get spidered, say, every 2 days, the page containing the link might get spidered every week, the link might be 'seen' and followed straightaway or it might be followed at the next visit.

this is one of the reasons behind getting links from highPR sites, they get visited more often.

continue to monitor backlinks on yahoo i say.

[randle]

they have chosen to make reverse-engineering more difficult by not disclosing all the backlinks that they have indexed for a page or domain.

Well said; the back link checker on the tool bar is a programmatic effort in disinformation. There’s three kinds of information you can glean from a tool like that; good information, no information or bad information. The latter is the worst kind so your better off not even looking at it other than for changes.

If it’s back links your curious about try here; [siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com...]

It’s not perfect but the distortion level is minimal compared to that of Google.

[dgrati]

Thanks for all the responses.

Am I to safely assume that if Yahoo's site explorer shows link-partner.com in the backlinks, Google must have duly noted the back link too?

[kevinpate]

> must have

that's probably too strong, but if it hasn't already happen, it likely will in time.