Google Webmaster Tools - assessing inbound links

[sophycolbert]

Hello,

I am terribly confused by Google Webmaster Tools. I am looking at my inbound links, to see which content on the site is strongest. However, the results from GWT under Links to your site, and the results from doing a link: search in Google yield very different results! For example, in GWT, this page on our site apparently 2237 links from 29 different domains. But when I search link:www.nigelsecostore.com/acatalog/Eco_Stapler.html, I get just three results, two of which are from our site. What is the cause of the disparity between the two results, or is it just my (lack of) understanding of what I am seeing in the Links to your site report in GWT?

Any help clearing this up gratefully received!

Many thanks,

Sophy

[sophycolbert]

Thanks for getting back to me, I'll try using a couple of tools to see what results I get.

Thanks,

Sophy

[sophycolbert]

Thanks for getting back to me, I'll try using a couple of tools to see what results I get.

Thanks,

Sophy

[MBayes]

Google WMT is a summary of your links, and not all inclusive.  Searching your domain name, Google does not serve up all the results they have indexed.

I would suggest you use multiple back link tools to identify what you have indexed, The tools here are great, and we spot check using Rank Ckecker ( a firefox add on you get at SEObook) ,  back link watch, and Yahoo site explorer.

Hope this helps.