Google - Lord of the 'Slash' - The 2 Domains

[jamesyap]

My head is BIG when I found out that google only see less than 20% of the inbound links to my site. There are 100+ sites linking to me and most have link to me at least 1 or 2 years ago. But why can't google see them?

The tale of Lord of the Slash - The 2 Domains.

The slash = The trailing slash after the domain in the URL
The 2 domains = www.mysite.com & www.mysite.com/

I found out that google Likes/Prefer a URL with the trailing slash. Most sites that link to my site with the magic slash in my URL shows in my google inbound links database WHILE most sites that don't have the magic slash didn't show out (only 1 show up, my own site). These sites are all in google database, just that they are not in my google inbound links database.

So anyone can help me? Is Google the Lord of the Slash?!

[rogerd]

Google generally shows links with PR 4 and higher, James. That's a more likely explanation than the slash...

[Slade]

have you tried to search for: "+www.yourdomain.com"

This should give you a good indication of where your domain is mentioned on the net. (it works for link checking when "link:" doesn't)

edit: You do have to use the quotes here!

[werty]

hey slade. thanks for that pointer. never used it before.

[creative craig]

I think that it is just a coincidence, it relates to the PageRank of the site that is linking to you. The trailing slash has no relevance as rogerd said :)

Craig

[jamesyap]

Rogerd, do you mean links from site with PR < 3 doesn't count in page rank? Or they just don't show up when I search for link:www.mysite.com.

Slade, I like that "+www.mydomain.com". It shows me 80+ sites that I don't even saw before. So it means I have more inbound links! But why there are less than 20 that show up in the link:www.mydomain.com check?

Hopefully the / has nothing to do with it, else how can I ask all of them to change!

[creative craig]

The links do count from a PR 3 or lower, just they dont show up when searching for sites linking to you, it doesnt have anything to do with the slash.

Craig

[Thanasus]

IF I understand correctly, "+www.yourdomain.com" searches for the text string in the quotes. The problem with that is if the linking website contains link text other than your domain name (such as keywords), than your google search will be fruitless.

[jomaxx]

I'm sure Google can handle both types of links without a hiccup, but it's worth noting that the correct way to link to a domain or subdirectory is with a trailing slash, and it's slightly more efficient in terms of web and server resources.

[jamesyap]

So we could conclude now that Google is not the Lord of the 'Slash' :) So, Don't Worry, Be Happy. That's for all your comments.