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Just how current are the backlinks? My own pagerank dropped after Esmerelda. I have verified that the toolbar shows a PR of 4 or higher for pages with links to mine yet they don't show in the backlinks for my pages.
I only hope they have not been counted YET in the assessment of my ranking position!
Hi Arnett,Thank you for your note.
We understand your concern about the Google link search results. As you've heard, our link search does not currently return a comprehensive set of results. The results show a sample of the links that point to your page,but this list is in no way indicative of the link structure utilized by
Google to formulate a page's PageRank.To obtain a more comprehensive list of the links that point to your page,you might try performing a Google search on your URL. From the result page, select the "Find the web pages that contain the term" link and Google will provide you with a list of web pages that mention your address.
We hope the information we have provided above is helpful.
Regards,
The Google Team
Original Message Follows:
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Subject: The link: operator
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 13:32:46 -0400On the page [google.com...] it says that the link operator will show "all the pages that point to that URL". See below.
Who links to you?
Some words, when followed by a colon, have special meanings to Google. One such word for Google is the link: operator. The query link:siteURL shows you all the pages that point to that URL. For example, link:www.google.com will show you all the pages that point to Google's home page. You cannot
combine a link: search with a regular keyword search.I have seen many statements from Google people saying that not all pages that point to a URL will be shown. In fact only pages with a pagerank of 4 or higher will be shown. Why does your own documentation deliberately lie about the results of the link operator?
"Find the web pages that contain the term"
displayed only 10-15% of my known backlinks. True, they did say it would be "more comprehensive" than link:, but it is still rather disapointing. It does not display any text links unless they are the url itself. Searching out backlinks by each possible anchor keyword is a little bit time consuming.
Personally, I appreciate Google's desire to provide relevant results, but it seems like the results are getting worse. Denying us tools to build sites to Google's standards just doesn't make sense to me for many reasons.It may not be high priority to them, but I would suggest that keeping us webmonkeys happy is critical to thier business. I do have faith that this is just a growing pain and the future will be better :)
I did : I searched for www.my-site.org.uk
I clicked on the link they suggest
I broke it....
It searched for
" www.my-site.or g.uk" - that insidious little space in the org making the search useless.
What a start to the day, eh?
DerekH
What counts is where your at when that average searcher types in that all important keyword.
Yes, getting good anchor text links will get you there, but how does knowing exactly how many links you have help you. All you have to do is check where your at in the SERPS.
I think Google did the right thing by not showing up to date back link results. They are irrelevant to the average person using Google anyway.
[edited by: mrguy at 6:45 am (utc) on Oct. 15, 2003]
I appreciate Google's desire to provide relevant results, but it seems like the results are getting worse.
That's my point. It's been going on for months. If they are so concerned about search quality why isn't being addressed?
but how does knowing exactly how many links you have help you.
It helps me know my status in the ever-changing, highly competitive world of Google ranking. They made the rules in order to provide relevant results and provided webmonkies a method to guage their progress. When the guage is broken but the value of the measurement has not been diminished you have to expect people to be concerned.
All you have to do is check where your at in the SERPS.
That's part of the problem. Many of us have seen our white hat, by the book sites drop from page one to page one hundred for no obvious reason and found spammy irrelevant sites replace sites that actually had original content.
One of the tools we use to figure out how this could be and to find and learn from our mistakes is the backlink feature -currently pretty useless.
Search Google for :
"http://yourdomain.com"
This will return the pages that have that text in them. Go through the pages and physically record the PR of the pages.
Search Google for :
"http://www.yourdomain.com"
This will return the pages that have that text in them. Go through the pages and physically record the PR of the pages.
Now it's decision making time. Which url do you want to maintain and what do you want for the anchor text. For your own pages go ahead and edit the links to contain the keyword that you are targeting in the SERPS. Then visit the pages on other sites that have a link to your site in them. Send them a very nice email thanking them for the link and,if you maintain a links section,offer to add a link to their site to your links page and ask them to change the text of your link to make the anchor text do what it should.
It can't hurt.
