Effectively Measuring Backlink

I've got a weird situation that I'm hoping someone has a good explanation for. We run a mainstream travel portal that has always had pretty good back links - a couple of thousand solid ones at last count.

This morning I ran a "link:" check on Google and got 35 back links. Yahoo is still showing thousands via "linkdomain:" in Site Explorer.

So I'm at a loss as to where all my hard earned links went? Any ideas?

Your links went nowhere....They must be there still its just that do not rely on Google's link command, it always shows you only a small sample of links.

So no need to worry at all, Yahoo is showing you, well not accurate, but something close to reality!

Thanks - I got the impression that the Google link: test is rather busted when doing a bit of searching after I posted the question.

The one thing I couldn't come up with is a decent test for counting backlinks. All the "SEO tool" sites I looked at produced really bad results. So far Yahoo looks the best but even it misses a lot.

Anyone out there come across a decent tool?

If it works, preferably on firefox, then backlinkwatch.com is a pretty useful tool.


This one was posted by a user a few days back. It seemed to work but had a few bugs. You can try this too....

backlink-tool(.)com (Remove the braces).

Otherwise yahoo is not so bad in producing backlink results.

When you sign up for Google Webmaster Tools, they provide you with a more accurate Link Count, in your private dashboard.

For example, right now Yahoo shows 2,750 Links at Yahoo Site Explorer (usually the number is between 2,480 & 2, 870).

Meanwhile, Google is showing me 2,183 "External Links" (what we call inbound links or backlinks).

If I were to do a Link Domain search in Google, they probably show about 60 to 80 of those 2,183 links.

GWT is free!

I think thats normal, google doesn't show all the back links. You can see it all in webmaster tools. While in yahoo almost all the backlinks are shown, I see some with no follow are also shown.

backlinkwatch is a very good tool or you can even try seocentro it's also accurate in giving results.

Google Webmaster tools is also worthless for backlink testing. They break it intentionally.

I'll try the others. Thanks for the info.

So it seems that there is really no way to get accurate backlink information? Dont these tools still use google which then skews the results?

Hmmmm......

Yahoo Site Explorer seems to be the best source of backlinks out there. Of course, since the Yahoo bot doesn't have nearly the reach of Google there are bound to be ones missing but everything else I tried was essentially useless.

I have been looking at Web CEO and even that appears to give inaccurate results for google.

Why worthless? It seems to me that - when it's working - it gives pretty good results.
What makes you think they "break it intentionally"? Seems like a strange thing to say... Do you have some evidence to support that?

Yahoo results are also quite comprehensive.

Quite honestly I don't see the point in obsessing over backlinks anyway... Is there any reason why you need to know all of them (as opposed to the vast majority - which GW/Tools will show you when it's not "broken")?

Yesterday they updated the External Link count at Google Webmaster Tools:

May 28: 2,555

compared to April 28: 2,183


increase of +370 (about 20% in one month).



In the same time period, Yahoo Site Explorer went as follows:

May 28: 3,280

April 28: 2,480

increase = +800 (up 25% in month)


As you can see, Google doesn't keep up with YSE in link count.

They are always "behind" in the numbers.

(Note: in my GWT External Link numbers, they are counting LOTS of "no follow" links --- same with YSE)