Excluding a site from a "link:" search

How to search for links to your site that aren't on your site?

[nonprof webguy]

I have a specific question about searching Google in ways that are useful to me in managing my site. I want to generate a list of web pages that link to my home page that does not include pages from my own site (which, of course, link to my home page).

I've tried

link:http://www.mysite.org/ -site:mysite.org

but it returns zero results. In fact, from what I can tell, you can't combine any other search terms with a "link:" query; "Search within results" won't return any results either.

If I just use the link: search, I get 906 results, but I'm guessing about 300 to 400 of those are pages on my own site. All I want is to narrow the results down just to other people's pages that link to my home page. I'd also like to get a list of such web pages that link to pages in my site other than my home page.

Now, with the Alexa Toolbar I get a list of 379 sites that link to me, but that list appears to be limited to sites linking to my home page, and not any other pages on my site. Naturally I scan my IIS logs regularly to identify linking pages, but I'm looking for a way to know about links sooner, and know about them even if they don't show up as referers in my logs.

Is what I want to do impossible? Is there a correct method for writing the query I want? Have any of you found a way to do what I'm trying to do? Thanks in advance for any help!

[vitaplease]

For advanced searching head to alltheweb.com

They allow backlink checking combined with site exclusion.

[jimbeetle]

As vitaplease says ATW best bet for checking links. This syntax:

link.all:www.domain.com -site:www.domain.com

will find *all* links to *any* pages in the domain minus internal links.

[SlyOldDog]

If you only want to see links with reasonable pagerank, you can use the google link command as normal, but set preferences for 100 results per page. It makes the results a lot easier to read so you can skip over your internal links more easily.

[nonprof webguy]

Yes, ATW is useful. Thanks for reminding me!

As you can understand, there are reasons why I specifically care to know which links are in Google's index.

[jimbeetle]

I specifically care to know which links are in Google's index.

We all do, but you have to keep in mind that Google will only returns link results from pages that are PR4 or above (sometimes high PR3). All links, even if they don't appear in the SERPs, count for PR.

[nonprof webguy]

Google only returns link results from pages that are PR4 or above

Aha. So the 906 results I get for

link:http//www.mysite.com

are only a selection of the pages Google knows of that link to me? I didn't realize that--thanks!

So, I guess that means there could be several thousand other pages with up to mid-3 PR that link to my site (but that don't show up in the results) and are dragging my PR down? Oh well. Just got to sow the seeds of more high-PR links.

[dazz]

nonprof_webguy

Links below 3 or even PR0 will not bring your own sites PR down, if any PR1+ sites link to yours it will help your PR it just wont show on the google link:url.com thing as they only show PR4 or more.

To get a true reflection of how many links to your site there is try altavista, FAST and teoma ect as well as google.

[annej]

I just noticed that
link.all:www.domain.com -site:www.domain.com
gives me all the links going anywhere in the domain and not just to the index page.

It's still interesting. Give's me a much more complete list of who is linking to the domain compared to google.

Anne

[Hagstrom]

> I want to generate a list of web pages that link to my home page that does not include pages from my own site

> I'd also like to get a list of such web pages that link to pages in my site other than my home page.

"www.mysite.com/mypage.htm" -site.www.mysite.com

Bear in mind that

1. Like the LINK-tool, this command is also crippled
   
2. This will find pages that mention your page - even if they don't link to it.
   

[Hagstrom]

> Aha. So the 906 results I get for link:http//www.mysite.com are only a selection of the pages Google knows of that link to me? I didn't realize that--thanks!

And if you go through them, you'll probably find that Google only shows you half the results (= 453).

> [...] but you have to keep in mind that Google will only returns link results from pages that are PR4 or above sometimes high PR3).

This often-repeated rule is not always true: one of the links to my page - found by the LINK-tool - is a DMOZ-clone with a grey pagerank