Member Avatar for techniner

OK so.. if I do...

link:site.com 0 results.. BUT

link: site.com and I get my results..


Alot of these BL checkers out there were showing me with 0 from google.. and I was not understanding why..

Could this be why?

They changed formats?

  • 2 Contributors
  • 2 Replies
  • 247 Views
  • 8 Hours Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by techniner

Dani AI

Generated

As and discovered, the strange behavior around link:site.com vs link: site.com is not a mysterious site change — it’s the fallout from Google’s long‑running deprecation of the link: operator. Google staff advised against using the operator in public Search years ago and the community observed it stop returning reliable backlink lists in early 2017. Search Engine Journal (coverage of the announcement) and Search Engine Land both document that shift. (searchenginejournal.com)

Historically the Advanced Search syntax required no space after the operator (for example link:example.com), and Google’s older docs described that behavior — but even then link: only returned a sampled subset of links (intentionally limited), so counts were never exhaustive. That explains why some backlink checkers (which relied on that output) showed wildly different numbers or zero once Google stopped supporting the command. Google blog, 2005 and later industry writeups explain the sampling/limitations. (developers.google.com)

Practical guidance: for owned properties use the Google Search Console Links report (Links > External links) as the authoritative Google-side source — verify the property, then export “Latest links” or “More sample links.” The Console still samples and groups canonical URLs and does not label every link as nofollow, so consider its limits when auditing. . ()

For competitive or comprehensive backlink research use third‑party indexes (Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz, SEMrush) and compare results across tools; these services run their own crawlers and provide much larger, regularly updated backlink indexes than any public search operator ever did. See a practical overview at Ahrefs. Ahrefs: What are backlinks? and Majestic reviews for tool differences. (ahrefs.com)

A final note on rel="nofollow": Google changed how nofollow is treated in 2019 — it is now a hint rather than a hard exclusion — so seeing rel="nofollow" on a link does not guarantee it will be ignored by Google’s systems. That change is separate from the removal of the link: operator; the operator’s absence simply removed a cheap public way to sample backlinks. Google Search Central blog. (developers.google.com)

Recommended Answers

All 2 Replies

Member Avatar for Dani

I was always under the impression that when there is no space after link: you are using Google's special function to show you how many different pages link to you. When there is a space after link: , you're simply doing a regular search using those two keywords (link and yoursite). However, I tried it out on my site and that doesn't seem to be the case. Having link: with a space after it is returning a lot of pages that are linking to me. So now I'm just very confused.

Member Avatar for techniner

CsGirl.. I don't get it either.. I am wondering if this is part of the infastructure change.. but its very very odd to be working this way.. don't you agree?

THis can explain ALOT of the BL & PR downfalls...

Just my .02 ... I was fooling around and found this and HAD to share with the community and get their take..

That fact that the "CSGAL" is stumped has me stracthing my head... I figured it would be a response like ....

Your doing it wrong...

You big DUMMY ITS THIS OR THAT.. hehehehehe

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.