Checking Google Backlinks

Posted by Rainer on November 26th, 2007 at 10:17am

Beginners often ask why there is so a big difference between the backlinks they receive in different search engine. Often, they say we have that large number of backlinks in Yahoo and <your search engine choice here> but Google has only one or two.

Does Google ignore your site? Well, that may be (speaking of the sandbox). But most often the cause is much simpler. Google offers a backlink search via the “link:” special search keyword. You type, for example “link:spacelaunch.gerhards.net“. At the time of this writing, it brings up 61 pages linking back to my space blog. That doesn’t sound too bad. But it is not the full truth, either…

Google has a special offering, called the “Webmaster Tools“. There, you can authenticate your site. This is done by adding either a meta tag or a special web page. After you have done this, Google knows you are actually the site owner and lets you dig into all the details. There is a section “Links” and in it “Pages with external links”. This is where you shall look for your inbound links. For my blog, it just showed 506 backlinks! Obviously, this is much better than what the search query brought up. In webmaster tools, you also have a very nice interface where you see which pages attract which backlinks - a useful tool for continuing to build your network.

My assumption is that Google does this to protect webmasters from competitors by not revealing all backlinks. Otherwise, it is too easy to try to get listed in the same places…

Lesson learned: If you’d like to know your backlinks, do NOT use the links: search keyword but use Google Webmaster Tools instead.

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