Thursday, January 22, 2004
ResourceShelf: "Web Search--Google
You Might Be Missing Material: Backwards Link Searching (Link:) With Google
If you who use Google to find what pages are linking to a specific web page (often referred to as a backward link or a reverse link), you might find the following news of interest. Google might NOT be showing you all of the pages that link to a specific url. I've seen several reports about this issue on search engine optimization sites. Today, I confirmed this as fact with a Google spokesperson. The search engine optimization sites mention that pages only with a certain PageRank are visible. I asked Google to explain the specific criteria used to determine which pages are visible with a link: search. Unfortunately, the spokesperson told me that the company would not publicly release this information. )-: I know it's not a good idea to assume. Nevertheless, most of the seo sites I've seen mention that lower-ranked sites (using Google's ranking methodology) are not visible with a link: search. The problem is that these sites might have useful data, especially when determining what pages link to a particular site.
Example:
+ link:www.fincen.gov
Using ATW, http://www.cftc.gov/cftc/cftcaml.htm is found to link to www.fincen.gov. It was confirmed by viewing the page. A Google search reveals that it has been crawled. However, this page is not revealed when running a link: search with Google.
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The easiest way to minimize any problems this issue could cause is to use more than one web engine. Of course, this is something we've been saying for a long time. At this point, my favorite engine for this type of searching is AllTheWeb. I use it either as my primary backward link engine or I'll run an ATW search at the same time I use Google.
AllTheWeb also has another advantage. ATW allows you to refine your reverse link searches. Here's an example:
+ link:www.aiip.org [Google]
+ link:www.aiip.org [ATW]
With AllTheWeb you can utilize additional syntax in your query string. For example, what .edu pages link to www.aiip.org?
The use of additional syntax with a Google backward link search is not available.
You Might Be Missing Material: Backwards Link Searching (Link:) With Google
If you who use Google to find what pages are linking to a specific web page (often referred to as a backward link or a reverse link), you might find the following news of interest. Google might NOT be showing you all of the pages that link to a specific url. I've seen several reports about this issue on search engine optimization sites. Today, I confirmed this as fact with a Google spokesperson. The search engine optimization sites mention that pages only with a certain PageRank are visible. I asked Google to explain the specific criteria used to determine which pages are visible with a link: search. Unfortunately, the spokesperson told me that the company would not publicly release this information. )-: I know it's not a good idea to assume. Nevertheless, most of the seo sites I've seen mention that lower-ranked sites (using Google's ranking methodology) are not visible with a link: search. The problem is that these sites might have useful data, especially when determining what pages link to a particular site.
Example:
+ link:www.fincen.gov
Using ATW, http://www.cftc.gov/cftc/cftcaml.htm is found to link to www.fincen.gov. It was confirmed by viewing the page. A Google search reveals that it has been crawled. However, this page is not revealed when running a link: search with Google.
--
The easiest way to minimize any problems this issue could cause is to use more than one web engine. Of course, this is something we've been saying for a long time. At this point, my favorite engine for this type of searching is AllTheWeb. I use it either as my primary backward link engine or I'll run an ATW search at the same time I use Google.
AllTheWeb also has another advantage. ATW allows you to refine your reverse link searches. Here's an example:
+ link:www.aiip.org [Google]
+ link:www.aiip.org [ATW]
With AllTheWeb you can utilize additional syntax in your query string. For example, what .edu pages link to www.aiip.org?
The use of additional syntax with a Google backward link search is not available.
# posted by Mark : 12:31
