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When I click the Query (i) button on Google tool bar for my web site (http://www.domain.com/) and do a search for backward links, it uses (link:www.domain.com) to do the search. With this search, my site returns zero results for backward links in Google.
But when I do a (+www.domain.com) search on Google, it returns many links.
I have also tried many other tools that show quite a few backward links on Google.
1. So, what is the difference between "link" vs "+" search?
2. If it is not the same, which one is counted towards your PR?
3. Can I do something to my web site to get results on "link" searches?
4. Do I even need to worry about this at all?
Thanks
Seth
[edited by: Marcia at 5:01 am (utc) on May 7, 2004]
[edit reason] No URLs, please. [/edit]
what is the difference between "link" vs "+" search?
A "link:" search returns pages that contain a link whose URL contains the string you specify.
A "+" search returns pages that contain the string you specify. It's different from a plain search because the "+" tells Google to include words that it would otherwise not search for (e.g. short common words like "the"). If you use this to search for a domain name, you'll get pages that mention the name but don't actually link to it. I don't know if it gives you pages that link to that site but don't use the name in the anchor text.
If it is not the same, which one is counted towards your PR?
If it's a link, it counts towards your PR. If it's not a link, it doesn't.
Can I do something to my web site to get results on "link" searches?
Google shows only a selection of your backlinks in a "link:" search. It used to be that you could count on it showing most of your links from pages that have a PR of about 4 or above, but that isn't true any more. I don't know what the criteria are now, or even if there are any real criteria (except maybe the PR4).
Do I even need to worry about this at all?
You can't control how Google chooses which links to display, so don't worry about it. As far as I know, it still includes the "missing" links in your PR, except of course for recent ones that it hasn't factored into the calculation yet.
