Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
WebmasterTools is only a reporting feature. The actual ranking algorithm and data are separate and sometimes the information imported into Webmaster Tools gets buggy. So Webmaster Tools does not affect ranking - it only works the other way around.
The links to your site shown in Webnaster Tools are only a sample of the links that Google has actually found. Typically this sample only includes about 20% to 30% of the total.
Or even less than that. I've been waiting anxiously for the past few months for a single backlink to show up on a one year old site that has had some super high quality links pointing to it for some months now.
Generally don't look so much at that report unless I bump into such a problem, or I'm working on a new site.
Thanks
You still see more in GWT than in the link: operator results, and that is the main communication, I think.
you will never see all your backlinks by GWT. Right?
Right in most cases. In fact, you will never see all your backlinks by any method I know of - whether through Google or not. If you pay for private link data from a company that is doing their own spidering of the web, then you will get more complete information than any public data. But still, that spidering will usually miss at least a few links here and there.
will 1500 links from one well ranked website get Google to rank my site?
the number of links is expected to go higher.
will 1500 links from one well ranked website get Google to rank my site?
Not very likely. Many links from the same site are only slightly more influential than one good link from that site. And since these are search result links, it's very likely that they will not count for much.
No. It only means that menospath's site had over a thouand links from one site clogging up the results, and not many other links inbound. That's it.
Google has never shown complete data, only a sample. Google used to only show links from PR4+ sites, which led to the mistaken belief that sites with less than PR4 counted less. Someone suggested to Matt that they should randomize the link sample so as to include -PR4 links and that's what they did in order to clear up the confusion about PR4+ links and give a broader sample of inbound links.
No search, whether it's an intitle search or a link search, will give you significant information about Google's algorithm. That was the mistake with the assumption about backlink search results and PR4. Assigning a meaning to the backlink search, such as that Google is keeping the "best" links "secret" will only confuse you because there is no meaning behind the search operator modified results. It's a random sample, meaning there is no order to it.
In my opinion, the only SERPs that have meaning and order are the regular search queries, not the SERPs modified by search operators and I am confident not the results in GWT. It's in Google's interest not to give you a clue about how they rank sites. But even in the SERPs Google has finally taken the anticipated step of personalizing SERPs, which means the SERPs might begin to look different according to the online habits of who is making the query. But as of this day, in my opinion the regular SERPs are the only ones with significant meaning.
Knowing that the backlink search is a sample, thus rendering the backlink search results meaningless for gaining insight into whether Google is counting a link or is not counting a link, what reason is there for doing a backlink search on your own website? Why do a backlink search?
Does a backlink search help verify if a link you acquired is being counted by Google?
The answer is no. Backlink search results do not indicate whether a link counts or not, nor do they indicate whether Google knows about the link or not. This is because the backlink sample is random. Google even shows nofollowed links.
Doing a backlink search to check if Google knows about a link is pointless. The best way to know if Google knows about a new link and that the link has decent juice is if your site moves up in the SERPs. Sometimes you need many poor-juice links to see a difference in the SERPs. So you have to use your judgement about whether a link is a pawn, a rook or a queen. Beyond an actual movement in the SERPs, nothing else will give you a feel about how Google rates a link, not even a backlink search.
Is there a reason to do a backlink search? For me, the answer is no. I don't have to do a backlink search to see if an important site randomly linked to me. An important link will show up in my traffic logs, in the REFERRER section. If I don't see a referrer from a link in my logs then in all likeliehood the wasn't that important.
The last time I did one was about a year ago when someone asked me about one of my sites and I checked how many dot edu's were linking to it.
The only reason I have for a backlink search is when working on acquiring backlinks. And for that purpose I use a Yahoo's linkdomain query.
