Backward links, google toolbar.

[nickcegar]

Has anyone one ever hit the blue i button on the google tool bar and used the backward links function?

Maybe i need more webspace in my head, but is this figure the number of links going back to a website?

Whats the difference between google and alexa? Google shows thousands of backword links for a site, were as alexa will only show 100?

so confused :sad:

[jewboy]

hey confused,

welcome to the non confusing world of seo where the waters are always calm and everything is so crystal clear ;-).

The blue "i" button shows a mysterious quantity of links that point to the page you are on. It is a poor metric in my opinion, and the opinion of many for measuring backlinks. In order to check backlinks, I recommend using Yahoo and querying- linkdomain:yourdomain.com

This will show you a more complete picture of who links to your entire domain. And the results tend to be ordered by sites deemed more valuable by Yahoo.

Alexa is a company owned by Amazon. Alexa rankings do not measure links - they measure traffic. Supposedly. Many webmasters find their information highly inaccurate. The lower the Alexa ranking, the more trafficked the site is (supposedly).

Many agree that the metrics in our industry - such as toolbar PageRank, MarketLeap scores, and Alexa rankings are highly inaccurate - but hey, those are the tools have at this point in the game. Love 'em or hate 'em, we are forced to rely on them to some extent. Particullarly when buying links.

[nickcegar]

Avi

You dont by any chance deal with SEO for sites based in the UK?

If you do is it possible to get a qoute for << url snipped >>

[ezest]

Google displays only partial links than actual links.

[mnemtsas]

Try looking at MSN search too for backlinks (link:www.yourdomain.com) . It seems to be the SE that lists new backlinks the quickest.

[dphammer]

You can also simply use a "link:" search in Google. I'm sorry to report that a Google search on "link:www.more4moving.com" turned up bupkus, which means your programming is even blocking bots from crawling your internal links.

Your designer also forgot a key feature for your site: a site map. Bots love sitemaps. Make sure it's done in simple code as well -- html or php is the best.

[J Lawren]

I wanted to try and give a more in depth answer to the question so here goes;

1. All links inbound to your website count as votes in Google’s Pagerank system.

2. Google only shows Back links that at the time Pagerank was last calculated "had a Pagerank of three or more on the page of the site that the link came from or if the page that the link came from was less than three, pages linking to that page had a pagerank of three or more".

So it is possible to rank higher in Google whilst apparently not having any back links. Try it! Go to Google.com and type Google back links. The top return has 3 backward links, the next two answers have none and the 4th answer has 40 backward links.

I wouldn’t be so bold as to base this theory on such a small test. So I did the same test thousands of times and Ialways get a similar answer.

What’s happening here is that the sum of the pages that have fractional Pagerank have outscored the pages that have a higher Pagerank? Whilst it appears to be unfair it isn’t, and it proves that a link counts no matter where it’s from.

Pagerank isn’t 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10. It’s every number in between so if you have a Pagerank of say 1.9999 your page rank will be 1.

I have heard people say you’re banned in Google or you have no Pagerank. Nonsense, you just have a Pagerank of less than 1.

It is possible to generate a Pagerank of 5 with your own websites internal linking structure.

Google periodically updates Pagerank, so if you’re thinking when will I see back links in Google the answer is the next time Google updates its data. Generally it seems to be about every 4 months but don’t bank on it. and remember just because you can't see them it doesn't mean their not there.

To find out how many links you have do
(link:www.yourdomainname) in yahoo and or MSN and you'll get a feel for the real number Google will never show you the same number as they don't show all the links.

[Harry smith]

Lawren,
IMO every search engines have their own datacenters for which they refer for. According yto me Yahoo has a great database comparatively so it must be showing more numbers of IBL.

[stymiee]

Lawren,
IMO every search engines have their own datacenters for which they refer for. According yto me Yahoo has a great database comparatively so it must be showing more numbers of IBL.

This is not for the reasons you say. Yahoo shows all IBL while Google purposely does not. Plus Google IBL count is only a snapshot that can be months old. There is no way you can compare the two in terms of accuracy and completeness as a result.