Q and A: What's the difference between these two Google backward link searches?
Dear Kalena...As always, thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. Much appreciated! Here is yet another question: I have been recently mystified by Google's link:www.yourwebsite.com search feature. If you do the search with a space between the colon and www you get different results. Example link:www.yourwebsite.com vs. link: www.yourwebsite.com
Can you explain the difference?
Thanks!
Marco
Kalena's Answer:
Dear Marco
That's easy. The first search is the correct query to use for determining the number of backward links pointing to your site that Google considers significant (note this is not your *true* number of backlinks. To see a more accurate list, you need to view your site within Google's Webmaster Tools).
The second search is a malformed query. What you're actually searching for with that query is all documents that have references to the word "link" and "www.yourwebsite.com" on the same page. Look at the cache for one of the listings for the second version and you'll see both items highlighted.
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Labels: google, search engine rankings, search engines, site search
2 Comments:
Let me see if I get this, if I use the Google search, those results are significant in that they come from or go to some place that matches me and has a rating but the webmaster one's are everything that's linking in my site?
Hi Ann
Sort of. The backlinks shown in Google are the ones that Google think are important. Generally, they are links from pages with higher PageRank or "TrustRank" as it's known in the biz. If you want to see all your backlinks, Google's Webmaster Tools has much larger coverage.
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