Search Operator Link: How accurate is the data?
-
How often do you guys use the search operator "link:"? How accurate is the data? Why the numbers of links when we use the parameter is way lower than the number on Google webmaster Tool or open site explorer? It only show the most powerful links?
-
How often do you guys use the search operator "link:"? Not very Often
How accurate is the data? Its accurate, but it only shows a small percentage of the links
Why the numbers of links when we use the parameter is way lower than the number on Google webmaster Tool or open site explorer? It is lower because in the past people used this search operator to find links pointing to competitors to help with their own link building plan
It only show the most powerful links? No it shows a random selection most of the time.
-
Yep, and Christoph Cemper has stated that you see ~15% of your actual links in Google WMT.
-
It's less accurate than what a teenager tells their parents is going to happen on prom night. It's not accurate at all, and Google has said this for years. Rand actually wrote about it four years ago at http://moz.com/blog/google-link-command-busting-the-myths.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Search Console - Sitemap
Hi all, Quick question. I'm trying to update my sitemap via Google Search Console using a sitemap.xml file that I've created with ScreamingFrog. However, when trying to submit it, it seems that Google only allows sitemaps that are located at a path within your domain (i.e. www.example.com/sitemap.xml) as opposed to being able to directly upload a sitemap.xml file.Is there any way that I can easily upload my sitemap.xml file? Or is there any easy way that I can upload the file to a path on my domain so I can upload via the URL?Any insight would be much appreciated!Best,Sung
Technical SEO | | hdeg0 -
Optimizing internal links or over-optimizing?
For a while I hated the look of the internal links page of Google Web Master Tools account for a certain site. With a total of 120+K pages, the top internal link was the one pointing to "FAQ". With around 1M links. That was due to the fact, on every single page, both the header and the footer where presenting 5 links to the most popular questions. The traffic of those FAQ pages is non-existent, the anchor text is not SEO interesting, and theoretically 1M useless internal links is detrimental for page juice flow. So I removed them. Replacing the anchor with javascript to keep the functionality. I actually left only 1 “pure” link to the FAQ page in the footer (site wide). And overnight, the internal links page of that GWT account disappeared. Blank, no links. Now... Mhhh... I feel like... Ops! Yes I am getting paranoid at the idea the sudden disappearance of 1M internal links was not appreciated by google bot. Anyone had similar experience? Could this be seen by google bot as over-optimizing and be penalized? Did I possibly triggered a manual review of the website removing 1M internal links? I remember Matt Cutts saying adding or removing 1M pages (pages) would trigger a flag at google spam team and lead to a manual review, but 1M internal links? Any idea?
Technical SEO | | max.favilli0 -
Updating inbound links vs. 301 redirecting the page they link to
Hi everyone, I'm preparing myself for a website redesign and finding conflicting information about inbound links and 301 redirects. If I have a URL (we'll say website.com/website) that is linked to by outside sources, should I get those outside sources to update their links when I change the URL to website.com/webpage? Or is it just as effective from a link juice perspective to simply 301 redirect the old page to the new page? Are there any other implications to this choice that I may want to consider? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Liggins0 -
Transferring link juice on a page with over 150 links
I'm building a resource section that will probably, hopefully, attract a lot of external links but the problem here is that on the main index page there will be a big number of links (around 150 internal links - 120 links pointing to resource sub-pages and 30 being the site's navigational links), so it will dilute the passed link juice and possibly waste some of it. Those 120 sub-pages will contain about 50-100 external links and 30 internal navigational links. In order to better visualise the matter think of this resource as a collection of hundreds of blogs categorised by domain on the index page (those 120 sub-pages). Those 120 sub-pages will contain 50-100 external links The question here is how to build the primary page (the one with 150 links) so it will pass the most link juice to the site or do you think this is OK and I shouldn't be worried about it (I know there used to be a roughly 100 links per page limit)? Any ideas? Many thanks
Technical SEO | | flo20 -
Cross links between sites
hi, We have several ecommerce sites and we cross linked 3 of them by mistake. We realize that the sites were linked through WMT, We have shut down 2 of the sites about 2 months ago, but WMT still shows the links coming from those 2 sites. how do we make sure that google will see the sites are shut down. Is there a better of way resolving this issue. We are no longer using those sites, so do not need them to be active. whats the best solution to show google that the links are no longer there. Crawler shows that it was able to crawl the site 45 days after it is shut down. thanks nick
Technical SEO | | orion680 -
Specific Link Page in Domain
Hi everyone: I have seen that many SEO Agencies have contacted my business (Also SEO but In- House) in order to interchange links. They have created a specific page on their site with the Label "Links" or similar, and on that page they add multiple links of the competence. I have heard that you can only do that if you make sure you add two things: No follow in links. Not inserting links of websites that have nothing to do with our sector. Either way, I have never found this amusing. I always recommend people not to do this but I have my doubts after all. ¿Could some one give me their opinion? Cheers !
Technical SEO | | Tintanus0 -
Site Disappeared off of Search
A friend of mine has a site (http://bit.ly/q4iWkM ) that was ranking number one for their key word (Drimnagh() and has now completely disappeared off of the ranking. I did some checking and can't see a problem. She does have duplicate meta and titles throughout but this shouldn't be a punishable offence that I know of and is something that I am going to correct with a quick plugin install. I couldn't see any redirects or code stopping search either. When you do site:URL it shows up OK as well. She is client of mine (for website not for SEO) and she is really upset about it so any help from the forum would be appreciated. This isn't even a site I did but you couldn't get a better person to work with so I am eager to help where and if possible. Guinness all round if someone solves it next time you are in Ireland
Technical SEO | | kdaly1000 -
Internal website search
Hi, I'd like to index dynamically generated - internal website search pages - to Google. A mod rewrite to make the URL strings friendlier might be one way, but as these pages are created on the fly and effectively don't exist till the search keywords are inputted, is it even possible to index them? thanks
Technical SEO | | richcowley0