Which links do Google display with link query?

Preeti Prakash — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 13:25:47 +0000

I have seen many of my colleagues and friends checking backlinks in Google, and not getting satisfactory results. When you type a link query or link command in Google search box, it returns only a few links while Yahoo returns majority of them. Why is it so? Do Google recognize only few of them? No. It’s not like that. Google do recognize them, but it doesn’t want you to know that it recognizes them.

For Google, link command is link:www.askpreeti.com

For Yahoo, link command is linkdomain:www.askpreeti.com

Google have deliberately manipulated their back link query system so that it only lets you see a small percentage of backlinks that it recognizes.

The webmasters can view the backlinks of their site through webmaster tools interface. But one can’t view all the backlinks of third party site through Google.

Recently, Google announced an improvement in blogroll detection which further reduces the number of links displayed by link: query. According to it, if you are linked from the blogroll section of a blog or any other part of the page that doesn’t change with the content, you won’t show up in the results of link query. This is indicative of the fact that Google is emphasizing on contextual links that are relevant to the context of the blog or site. Advertorial links in footer or blogroll will not be given much weightage.

Thus, to increase your link popularity, create unique and impressive content for your website to which people will link naturally, rather than wasting time linking to lots of low quality sites. It’s the quality of links that matters most, not the quantity.

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Which links do Google display with link query?