Forum Moderators: martinibuster
[edited by: engine at 2:19 pm (utc) on Jan. 2, 2008]
[edit reason] No urls, thanks. See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]
I usually just concentrate on the Google links but I'd be interested in finding out how and why the major search engine links results are so different, whats the difference between the links that show up in google as opposed to say yahoo and how you can conduct 'link campaigns' that target particular search engines.
I hope I didnt step on you toes with this response VegasGuy, I think I'm after the same information as you are.
Their "importance" criteria is a grey area from my experience, but you can be sure that the Google Links figure isnt consistent with the ACTUAL amount of links you have out there.
Yahoo counts internal links, hence why their link counts are always higher. Although it is my understanding that they also have an importance critera.
If you want to see exactly what links you are being credited for and which you are not, using the link:http://www.insertyourdomainhere.com feature on each of the respective Engines will tell you from the horses mouth as it were.
Im sure there is more to it, however here is my basic understanding:
Google Links - Only inbound links from external, important sources (hence low figures)
Yahoo Links - Internal links counted, plus important inbound links.
Altavista Links - All links, internal and external inbound from all indexed sites. Counts multiple links from same domain (hence quite large figures)
Hope everyone is well, I am new to WebmasterWorld.com... its a great forum you will be seeing me more often!
[edited by: ZydoSEO at 2:10 pm (utc) on Jan. 2, 2008]
So am I to understand that my "0" count under Google means I have no inbound links of high quality?
No. LiamVeimedia is operating under a common misconception that is almost four years out of date.
Google is well known for only bothering to report on "important" inbound links.
1. Not true. I will explain why.
Google used to report only a sample of inbounds from PR 4 or above. This led to the webmaster misconception that only PR 4 and above are useful, as well as the misconeption that Google only shows "important" backlinks. Ever since then webmasters shun links from any site with less than PR 4. Sadly, webmasters continue making this mistake to this very day. Even though Google has changed how it reports backlinks, webmasters continue to operate under the old mistaken notions, as if nothing has changed.
2. What changed? Several years ago, DaveN spoke with Matt Cutts in London several years back and told him of the practices springing up around the PR 4 limitations and said it would be a great idea if they showed a randomized sample of backlinks. Matt agreed and shortly thereafter Google started showing a randomized sample of backlinks.
3. Google doesn't show you all backlinks.
4. What backlinks it shows aren't necessarily counting for the algo.
5. What backlinks it doesn't show doesn't mean they are not counting, it only means they are not being shown to you.
6. Google's backlink data is not useful for making accurate SEO decisions as they do not represent data about how things are ranked.
Here's the thread, message #28 [forums.searchenginewatch.com], where GoogleGuy announces the change.
Thanks again
Thanks for the info everyone. So is there any tool, free or otherwise, that you would view is effective at giving the correct link numbers?
It's a metric that you shouldn't fret over. Using the Webmaster Tools available from the search engines themselves is probably your best option as mentioned above by jimbeetle.
It's not the total numbers that count. It's the quality of the links. We repeat that over and over round here but unfortunately it's still a numbers game for many. It's time to break that mindset, the year is 2008. :)
