Google isn't picking up some of my backlinks for my hubs

1. 68

   easyspeakposted 14 years ago

   When I do the link:'url' thing on google for my hubs, nothing comes up for the hubs that I've done backlinks for on ezine and other places.  Does that mean google isn't counting my backlinks to my hubs?
   
   When I use http://www.checkbacklink.com/ it does pick up the backlinks.
   
   Anyone have any insights on this? Thanks!

   replyreport
2. 51

   Inc the Mediaposted 14 years ago

   well i seem to be having the same problem. But I am ranking #11 on yahoo so I am waiting it out right now. You might want to social book mark your hub and also check other search engines. Check out my hub!

   replyreport
3. 64

   Mishaposted 14 years ago

   google never shows all backlinks, just a tiny part of them.

   replyreport
   1. 68

      easyspeakposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      why not? does that mean google doesn't count them in their pageranking?

      replyreport
   2. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I noticed that too.

      replyreport
4. 71

   CarpetDiemposted 14 years ago

   Google actually only shows a small portion of the links they find. They keep the rest secret. The best measure of how many links you really have is how you rank. Worry about where you rank (and why) and not trying to figure out how many links you have!
   Good luck!

   replyreport
5. 66

   Appletreedealsposted 14 years ago

   Well, I stumbled across this thread and now I'm puzzled - and bummed.
   
   Used the "check backlinks" tool link in the OP for some of my hubs and no links are showing up! or just 1 or 2.
   
   These are hubs I know have at least 4 bookmark site links, like reddit, shetoldme, xomba, digg
   
   and at least 2 - 3 content article links
   
   and at least 2 blog post links (diff. blogs)
   
   then I googled "backlink checkers" and tried a couple other backlink tools - same results
   
   ??????
   
   anyone have any insight or thoughts on my problem
   
   (ps. using google search LINK:+URL trick is not showing any links at all)

   replyreport
   1. 58

      englightenedsoulposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Xomba and digg are no follow so they would only give you traffic but would not be counted as backlink. And may the blogs you are posting your link to are nofollow as well.

      replyreport
6. 61

   TLMinutposted 14 years ago

   This is great, I always wondered how you could see who linked to you. Someone told me a way to check once but I've never seen this backlink checker tool before.

   replyreport
7. 79

   thisisoliposted 14 years ago

   Reddit, shetoldme, xomba, digg are all no-follow, so will not be counted as backlinks by Google.
   
   Google does not hide backlinks if you search using
   
   link:http://www.example.com
   
   If it's not on there Google isn't calculating it.
   
   Yahoo search is nowhere enar as complicated as the Google search algorythm, which is why it is filled with spam, 95% of my search engine traffic is from google.

   replyreport
   1. 82

      Lily Roseposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Are links from Ezine articles dofollow?  I never knew your could search for links to your hubs/sites.  I tried with your info above and none of my ezine articles come up.

      replyreport
      1. 76

         skyfireposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Yes, article directories are dofollow and good resource for traffic.

         replyreport
         1. 79

            thisisoliposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            Most article directories are no-follow.

            replyreport
   2. 75

      Lissieposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      
      
      No that's not true - Gogle is no record for saying they only ever report a small % of the backlinks that they actually count. I use Yahoo site explorere (or seo for firefox ) to check backlinks to hubs and other material - its not perfect - but its as good as you will get.
      
      No-follow is not an entire waste of time either - sometimes G will screw up and follow anyways - and Yahoo and Bing don't use the nofollow criteria at all.

      replyreport
      1. 79

         thisisoliposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         I would very much like to see the article which reports that Google only show you a few of the backlinks they count, because I call bullsh*t on that quote. The Google Link function shows you exactly which backlinks Google classes as viable Backlinks to your website. 
         
         Yahoo is only accurate for backlinks that Yahoo uses for it's search engine. Try comparing your Yahoo traffic and your Google traffic, Yahoo is insignificant by comparison.
         
         Google will not screw up and follow a no-follow backlink, since that attribute tells the Google search spider not to follow.
         Both Bing and Yahoo also use the No-Follow tag, so I really don't know where you are pulling your information from.

         replyreport
         1. 49

            johnr54posted 14 years agoin reply to this

            Go into your Google Webmasters panel for any site you own.  the number of links reported there is always significantly higher than those reported by the Google "link" command.  One of them therefore is inaccurate, and the consensus in the industry is that it's the external "link" command.  The rationale is that if they reported every link they were counting it would be much easier to reverse engineer their algorithm.  Many even suspect the webmasters tool is incomplete as well, for the same reason.
            
            I personally use the yahoo site explorer, although it does have the limitations of just 1000 links per page, and it reports nofollowed links even though Yahoo reportedly doesn't use them in their ranking algorithm.

            replyreport
8. 0

   shazwellynposted 14 years ago

   Google have changed the ranking criteria!
   
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhrZKejdmEE
   
   I hope this helps!
   
   x
   
   Loads of changes this month!  Page speed is more the defining page rank influence

   replyreport
   1. 77

      sabrebIadeposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for posting that, I hadn't seen it.

      replyreport
      1. 0

         shazwellynposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         No problem, but it will have a marked effect on us all! x

         replyreport
9. 66

   Ivorwenposted 14 years ago

   You can use the Yahoo backlink checker to find out how many backlinks you have.  It will not show you what they are, only how many.

   replyreport
   1. 0

      Kenrick Chatmanposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      What about using Yahoo! Explorer? You can check the number of dofollow and nofollow links. However, this may be only for websites and blogs...

      replyreport
10. 79

    thisisoliposted 14 years ago

    I have been in the industry a long time, full time and part time, I get paid to get websites in to the first page on Google, and I can guarentee that neither myself, nor any of my competition, would accept backlinks that did not appear in the Google link tool. 
    
    Google link search will omit some items, but it does contain a link allowing you to view them.
    
    Not many people use Yahoo Explorer, simply because the facts it reports are only really relevant for Yahoo, and even then only partly so for SEO puurposes, which is not a particularly great source of traffic in any case.
    
    Backlinks are just one part of a complex Google formula, a formula which cannot be reverse engineered, since that suggests that the formula itself is accessible. People have made statistical guesses at the different weights some aspects have on the formula, but nothing more than that. SERPS are calculated on the returned data from the Google spiders.
    
    A lot of information can be found on how the Google search engine works by reading matt Cutts blog, he is one of the few public faces of the Google search engine empire, and he does a good job of relaying exactly how Google works.

    replyreport
11. 49

    johnr54posted 14 years ago

    Very impressive!
    
    So what do you see as the rationale for the difference in the results from the "link" command and the Webmaster Tools links report?

    replyreport
12. 79

    thisisoliposted 14 years ago

    Actually I stand corrected on this, the data changed, I ave just been in touch with a friend at Google who says that recently the balance between links and webmaster tools has been changed dramatically.
    
    The Links: command has been changed to include erroneous data, including no-follow, but to compensate it has reduced the amount of data it delivers, giving you a small random selection of teh backlinks.
    
    Webmaster tools now contains a more complete report, however it falls over as it still does not have quite the same accuracy that the link: command used to.
    
    This kind of confused me, but it does explain where the reverse engineering comment may have come from, since he explained in the press release this move was made to alter the ability to Reverse Engineer other websites organic keyword strategies (Not reverse engineer the Google algorithm). Apparently this was brought in to play because there were an increasing number of programs which would reveal this data to anyone who was willing to pay $20.
    
    So my apologies on this one!
    
    It is good to know though, might have to double check some of my link engines to check everything is still working out!
    
    Googles tools are still better than Yahoos, but I feel like an idiot for missing this change in Googles policies!

    replyreport
13. 76

    sunforgedposted 14 years ago

    I have never seen any definitive or reputable source state that yahoo bing or anyone but google pays attention to the nofollow attribute.
    
    My personal observations show that its rather easy to rank first page on yahoo using all backlink sources that are nofollow.
    
    I would be interested in seeing any respectable source that shows that googles competitors bother to use their "nofollow" attribute in their own rankings. ?
    
    SERPS for each engine are obviously quite different

    replyreport
14. 64

    Mishaposted 14 years ago

    For the whole time I am working online - and this is more than three years - google always showed much less links using link command than in webmaster tools. Yahoo always was used to get a more accurate reading of competotors' links. I don't know on what planet you have been doing your stuff Oli, definitely not on the one I was doing mine.

    replyreport
15. 79

    thisisoliposted 14 years ago

    Google webmaster Tools has always included a lot of omitted results from the same website, where as Google Link: places a 'show omitted results' link.
    
    For information on the search engines use of no-follow,
    
    http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search … fgW3pYqCN4
    
    
    http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/ … ow-content
    
    I will keep looking for an official microsoft announcement on no-follow, I am having trouble finding where they release this kind of information to the general public.
    
    At the moment The only contact from MS itself I can find is to do with No Follow bugs in their new search engine, which they have apparently resolved now!

    replyreport
    1. 59

       Greg Cremiaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       The 'show omitted results' link does not show up when you use the 'link' command. This only shows up when you use the 'site' command to see how many pages are indexed. ps. the 'site' command is not accurate either.

       replyreport
16. 76

    sunforgedposted 14 years ago

    thanks oli, im off to read

    replyreport
17. 76

    sunforgedposted 14 years ago

    def ..yahoo is using nofollow as you said
    
    "Yahoo! Slurp may use a "nofollow" link for discovering content, but the link will not be considered an "approved" link for consideration when ranking the target page."
    
    If i wanted to giveaway some of my sites and well performing hubs I could show examples of top 3 returns on well paying competitive terms in google in the yahoo results
    
    ugh, thats a mouthful, sites that according to google standards should be very hard to rank for, show up as top 3 in yahoo, yet I never did a backlink campaign outside of some automated social bookmarking (all nofollow)
    
    thanks for taking the time to dig up the links

    replyreport
18. 79

    thisisoliposted 14 years ago

    http://download.microsoft.com/download/ … MC_FAQ.pdf
    
    (at the bottom, also mentioned somewhere in the middle)
    
    http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/web … m-101.aspx
    
    "Participate in relevant blogs and forums and refer back to your site's content when applicable (Note that some blogs and forums add the rel="nofollow" attribute to links created in user-generated content (UGC). While creating links to your content in these locations won't automatically create backlinks for search engines, readers who click through and like what they find may create outbound links to your site, and those are good.)"
    
    Are both official, and brush lightly on the no follow topic
    
    http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/web … ageIndex=3
    
    Is written by Rick from Bing, and also brushes on the No Follow attribute, although he does advise using the standardized method of robots.txt rather than direct meta tag statements for non indexing of you own website, it does confirm that no follow is used by Bing though,
    
    "Use the rel=”nofollow” parameter in your anchor tags to identify pages you don’t want followed, such as those to untrusted sources, such as forum comments or to a site that you are not certain you want to endorse (remember, your outbound links are otherwise considered to be de facto endorsements of the linked content). An example of the code looks like this:"

    replyreport
19. 79

    thisisoliposted 14 years ago

    Glad you found them useful, I know this topic can be a nightmare to sort through, and there is a lot of erroneous data out there which is often from sites with agendas. I always try to find information on these thigns from the source!
    
    If there is one thing I have learnt over the last decade, it is always prepare to be wrong about something, with all the mis-information and changing standards, it is easy to loose track of things when you are just one person keeping up with a host of international companies!

    replyreport
20. 79

    thisisoliposted 14 years ago

    http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en-GB … p;ie=UTF-8
    
    Please see that link for one of my sites where the omitted results link is apparent in the Link: command.

    replyreport
    1. 59

       Greg Cremiaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       I stand corrected. My apologies. I learn new something every day.

       replyreport
21. 82

    Lily Roseposted 14 years ago

    I've never used Google's Webmaster Tools - can I use it with HubPages or my Blogger Blog, or does it have to be a domain I own?

    replyreport
22. 64

    Has_aWayWithWordsposted 14 years ago

    the Google link:"url" method is very innacurate lately. I think due to the upgrades to webmaster tools that google is or has done. Google doesn't show any backlinks for a page here that hubpages shows 4 *'s for incoming links and yahoo shows almost 100 links. the whole thing about finding your backlinks is ridiculous, Just do a search for your url and it will come up in several places where it is either linked or mentioned.

    replyreport