Well, I’ve explained this before, but “link:” operator is accurate, but it only shows a subsample of your links. My preferred way would be to log into Google’s Webmaster Tools and we would show you a very exhaustive list of your backlinks, pretty much all of the backlinks that we know of in Google’s Webmaster console.
The nice thing is, other people can’t spy on that, so you competitor can’t look at your backlinks. You can start to see some backlinks for other sites. Yahoo! Site Explorer, for example. If you type an URL into Yahoo! Site Explorer search box, you can explore backlinks a little bit that way.
So, those are a couple of tools that you can use.
Then again, it’s not that “link:” show wrong links, it’s just that we don’t show all of the links that we know of. So, there are a lot of different options that you have to find more about backlinks for different websites.
Related posts:
- If you have inbound links from reputable sites, but those sites do not show up in a link:webname.com search, does this mean you are not getting any “credit” in Google’s eyes for having inbound links?
- How accurate is Google’s backlink check (link:…)? Are all nofollow backlinks filtered out or why does Yahoo/MSN show quite more backlink results?
- As Google’s algorithms evolve, is it better to have exceptional links and mediocre content, or exceptional content and mediocre links? By links I mean inbound link quality/quantity. Can you sites with awesome content outrank mediocre/established sites?
- Will Google consider Yahoo! Directory and BOTW as sources of paid links? If no, why is this different from another site that sell link ?
- Do you feel that the widespread and blanket use of nofollow tags is devaluing Google’s search algorithms? Examples such as Wikipedia, where ALL external links are nofollow. Does Wikipedia mean nothing to Google’s algorithms? Do Google take into account quality factors from nofollowed links when the links come from the well established authority websites, such as Wikipedia?
