Odd behavior on link site operand

[MrWumpus]

I was checking some back links on Google using link:www.webmasterworld.com and noticed a few were coming from www.webmasterworld.com itself, so I changed the search to

link:www.webmasterworld.com -site:www.webmasterworld.com

Lo and behold, thousands more back links appeared. A few I noticed weren't real back links but just my URL name.

And actually you can just put gobbledygook for the -site operand, and even more back links appear:

link:www.webmasterworld.com -site:blahblahsfjskdj

So what exactly is going on here?

[tedster]

you can just put gobbledygook for the -site operand, and even more back links appear

That one's easy - you're also getting internal backlinks becaise you're no longer removing them with -site:

But the first observation is a very interesting little observation. The link: operator has never shown more than a sampling of backlinks, but this does look like it gets Google to give up more information. Only thing is, for a few sites I've checked, this combined operator is one of those VERY rough "about" numbers. And even clicking through, I see results that do not have a link. So take this reported information with a grain of salt, I guess

[MrWumpus]

Yeah the first one is very odd. What I'm seeing is both known back links and then certain sites that don't link to mine but contain the name of my site somewhere in their page, so if my site is mywidgets.com the results have sites contains "My Widgets" somewhere.

Why Google is only pulling back certain instances of "My Widgets" is these SERPS is interesting. If I search "My Widgets" by itself, I might get 10x the results. This leads me to think maybe these certain pages returned in the SERPS containing "My Widgets" are being weighed by Google for some reason in relation to mine.

I'd be interested to hear other takes on this.

[tedster]

I should probably state my opinion more exactly - the site: operator search is simply broken, especially when combined with complex other terms. The site: operator search results often are buggy at various times, especially around times when Google is changing something on the back end. Giving solid site: results is not top priority at the 'plex, I assume.

I also see what you mentioned - those results do pick up mere mentions, rather than only showing true links.