Link: results shown by Google change every 2 weeks

[eljacko]

I have a website which is ranking in the top 20 for major keywords, I have lately found that in the last month google has reset the link amount shown in link: to 10, it then started rebuilding this to 300 but after 2 weeks of rebuilding it has done it again and ranking s have dropped 3 places.

Why could this be happening?

[tedster]

The link: operator results are not hooked into the ranking algo. All they ever are is a public report - just a sampling of all the links that Google has indexed - and they change that sample from time to time. Don't look for cause and effect with the link: operator results, because it doesn't exist.

It's somewhat interesting that they are changing those results more often - I wouldn't have known without your report because I almost never look at link: on Google.

[eljacko]

Thanks Tedster, I guess it's a google cache thing because recently it's been slower than usals on a few pages within the website.

Any way of speeding the crawl rate? Have looked at webmaster tools, no luck.

[gouri]

I was looking at Google Webmaster and they used to have a feature where you might be able to choose a faster crawl rate but I am not sure that the feauture is there now.

I think Google is determining the crawl rate.