Is it just me or does the Google link: search never work?

[turdface]

I never get any results for most sites.

Even cnn.com only returns less than 3,000 links. I'm pretty sure CNN has more than 3000 links.

 

[myownhero]

Google never made the claim it was comprehensive, for obvious reasons they don't show all of a sites backlinks.

 

[tompots]

No you will never see all the links to a site like that.

 

[turdface]

So the "link:" search isn't really useful for anything then?

 

[SEO_Alchemy]

So the "link:" search isn't really useful for anything then?

Just for a quick "snapshot" of the domain backlink profile, but for a comprehensive link analysis it's yes, useless.

 

[n3wbseo]

when i need a couple billion spam in a can links i use the link: feature with a common comment footprint on comment urls i find on those really spammed out pages with a billion comments on them and then suck the results out of google and instant spam in a can comment spam links.

example:

"leave a reply" AND "mail" AND "comment" and "website" site:commentspammerurls.net

even if you only get a few dozen per result when you do a few million searches you end up with tons of free links you can use to spam or sell lists etc.. a never ending supply....

 

[bartosimpsonio]

The link feature has been discontinued for all practical purposes. What you see is an actual search for the domain, not a special command.

In the old days it used to show almost 100% of links, then Google started hiding more and more, today it's useless. Google doesn't want any SEO done on their systems, they're hiding the referrers, the search terms, etc...

 

[louieknows]

Just for a quick "snapshot" of the domain backlink profile, but for a comprehensive link analysis it's yes, useless.

i'm trying to contact you, i can't PM though, can you message me?

 

[t0mmy]

Of course it doesn't show you much, google does not want you to see your links period! It's getting even harder now to find them with 3rd party tools too and a lot of them show different results. It's very hard to explain that to people when they ask why only a few links are showing up in WMT though lol