Backlink counts.

How accurate are they?

[Mohamed_E]

When I check back links to my site I currently get (after clicking on "repeat the search with the omitted results included.") 104 out of "about 208" results. Checking them shows almost all of the links that I know about. These include three Yahoo! directory listings plus one DMOZ listing. I have always wondered what the other 104 links are.

I know, from alltheweb, that there are some DMOZ clones that point to me. I also know that there are a few (very few) links from real sites that are missing. It seems to me that there is no way that these can add up to 104 missing links!

Yesterday I looked at the back links of an internal page, and again got twice the number of known links. Since this was a popular page I had to say that it was conceivable (but highly unlikely!) that 50 obscure sites had linked to it. So I looked at the back links of a rather poorly written page about a couple of deservedly obscure mountains.

Sure enough, google gave me what it called "Results 1 - 49 of about 100." OK, there were about five or six internal links that did not show up, but it seems to me to be utterly inconceivable that 40 people have linked to that page.

I find it difficult to believe that this is a bug, equally difficult to believe that google is intentionally misleading me.

Am I the only one to have wondered where those "missing links" come from? Does anyone have an explanation?

[Chris_R]

I haven't really looked into it too much since it first appeared a few months ago. Google has been stating 2x the number of links for a few updates now. It was my original believe that it was a bug and google was stating 20 links when there was 10.

Someone suggested that google was not showing half the links. I am not sure if this is correct or not.

I believe, but haven't tested, that it is a bug and google is showing twice the number of links. Of course - to make it more complicated - google does not show all the links, but only those of a pr3ish or higher.

When looking for links - sometimes I use:

marketleap.com