How to work out Google Backlinks

We recently decided to drop the Google backlinks checking option from our website ranking tool. Why? Because even Google admit that there is no accurate way to check for backlinks on Google.

Read what Matt Cutts of Google has to say:

"The short answer is that historically, we only had room for a very small percentage of backlinks because web search was the main part and we didn't have a ton of servers for link colon queries and so, we have doubled or increased the amount of backlinks that we show over time for link colon, but it is still a sub-sample. It's a relatively small percentage. And I think that that's a pretty good balance, because if you just automatically show a ton of backlinks for any website then spammers or competitors can use that to try to reverse engineer someone's rankings."

So Google themselves admit that they do not show all backlinks.

The normal way that Google have advised webmasters to check for backlinks was to use the "link:" command like this:

"You can perform a Google search using the link: operator to find a sampling of links to any site. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list web pages that have links pointing to the Google home page. Note there can be no space between the "link:" and the web page URL."

Checking iPagrank.org using this command, Google tells us that we have 3 backlinks.

Now then, Google offer webmasters a tool which offers a varied selection of statistics including backlinks:

"To see a much larger sampling of links to any verified site in Webmaster Tools:

On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.

Under Your site on the web, click Links to your site.

Note: Not all links to your site may be listed. This is normal"

[You can access Google's Webmaster Tools by opening an account here and then verifying your site]

Checking iPagerank.org using Webmaster Tools, Google tells us that we have 522 backlinks. Somewhat different to the link:www.domain.com command.

There is also another way, though it will list results that mention your site without necessarily linking back. Simply do a search for your domain in quotation marks like this: "domain.com".

So there you go, three ways to check for your Google backlinks - but as Google point out, none of them accurate.

Good luck!