Link:site.com Question, Order of Results Options

[Clark Financial]

If you look up your back links in Google with the "link:" search, do the results show up in order of importance? In other words, could you expect the first result to be your highest value link? I'm curious because my site is listed in the DMOZ, and yet there is no link from them appearing in the first 200 results for my site.

Thanks

[JohnMu]

Hi Clark
The results shown in a link:-query on Google are just a rough sample of the links that are known - they are also in no particular order. For a better sample, you can check the links shown in your Webmaster Tools account (you'll have to verify ownership of your site first). Hope it helps!

John

[sonjay]

John, in what way is the link: result set in the Webmaster Tools "better" than the link: search result set? Does "better" mean only that it's a more complete sample, or is it also in some kind of meaningful order?

[kestrel]

Hi Clark,

The general belief is that Yahoo's backlink checker shows backlinks in order of importance.

The Google webmaster tools link checker shows a more complete sample than Googles link: operator. Not sure if the links are listed in order of importance.

But if Yahoo's list is, problem solved

K

This post has been edited by kestrel: Dec 30 2007, 07:26 AM

[JohnMu]

Kestrel is right, the Webmaster Tools account shows a more complete sample. I wouldn't count on any list being in order of importance -- after all, how do you measure importance? How can any tool know what you personally feel is important?

John

[Clark Financial]

Thanks for the replies! I checked on Yahoo, and my DMOZ link is in the top 5 results. Looking at the other top results on Yahoo, I would assume that those are ranked in order of value.

[Adam_C]

There was a time when Google returned meaningful link reports. There was also for a while a couple of loopholes where you could add a special character before the link: command (-link: and _link: if I remember correctly) and get your backlinks ordered by PageRank. Around 2002 I think.

[kestrel]

Hi John,

By important i mean important in the eyes of a search engine. While it's not known for definate, there's a commonly held view that Yahoo lists a sites backlinks with the most 'important' sites first.

K

[JohnMu]

Hi Kestrel

If a search engine were to outright show you which links it finds most valuable, what would you do with that information? Anyone who knew about that would take that information and try to construct other links in the same way. The problem with that is that search engines value links because they assume that they are (for some part at least) natural. If they gave you information on how to unnaturally tweak your links, they would be breaking their assumption. It's a kind of catch-22 . And add to that the problem that if they break their assumptions, they'll have to change their assumptions (or methods), thereby making the old importance possibly irrelevant in the future.

John

[bwelford]

Hi John, I'm afraid your argument doesn't convince me.

Let's imagine a world without search engines. Let's assume instead that some philanthropists decide to set up spidering operations and catalog the Web linkages. Suppose on visiting their website, YaGoo, you could do a query denoted by link:domain.com. Using some algorithm, they would estimate for each inlink to your domain the probable traffic that might visit via this inlink.

That would seem to me a very useful service. I don't see any downsides to the availability of the service and perhaps there are upsides. I guess some of us are hoping that a link: search with the regular search engines might give something comparable.

[JohnMu]

Ah, but Barry, that is something else. If the importance of a link (to you) is the traffic that it brings, then that's something which you can measure much better than any search engine -- just check your logs.

John

[bwelford]

If I want to guess how my competition may be doing, John, that is something that the Yagoo service would help with.