Lack of links when searching with link:

[bluehatface]

Hello there!

I have a site that I made a few months ago. I made a handful of links, and left it to it.

In webmaster tools, it shows a few links pointing to my site, and I can see that some indexed pages with my links show up in the SERPS, but when I search in Google with link:mysite.com, it returns nothing. I know they aren't all nofollow, so there should be some right? Even some from my own site?

My site is indexed... using site:mysite.com. What obvious thing am I missing?

 

[c0bbz]

The 'link:' search operator never seems to work for me either, doing an exact match search for your site (like "yoursite.com") you should be able to see some external backlinks to your site

 

[TropicalSun]

The link operator has never worked properly, so don't waste time using it or trying to get it to work.

If you want to check links use Webmaster Tools (for your own sites) or use things like Ahrefs

 

[SEO_Alchemy]

that operator shows a very very small percentage of links...... noFollow, ******** has absolutely no relevance here at all. WMT will show a few more, but still google does not want webmasters/seos knowing how fast it finds links or how quickly they will effect rankngs so again that info is dampened. Best to use dedi link tracking solutions like aHrefs, majestic, seo spyglass etc.

 

[tony_d]

'link:' is probably the least effective way to find links - ahrefs and majestic are both infinitely more accurate, even though neither is perfect.

 

[Biznik]

'link:' is probably the least effective way to find links - ahrefs and majestic are both infinitely more accurate, even though neither is perfect.

Agreed. Ahrefs has a huge index, but in some cases where it's not finding the links I want, Majestic is the second best.

 

[SaulGoodman]

Perfectly explained SEO_Alchemy ! Couldn't have said this better myself

From my experience aHrefs.com tends to be a bit faster in finding new backlinks, althoug Majestics is also having some nice features...
Use both if you can afford it

 

[bluehatface]

Great - cheers guys.

Nice one SEO_Alchemy - I'd not thought of that

 

[john1444]

Don't tell me that's what you sit all day to monitor.

Weren't you told that not all backlinks are visible.

And different tools will turn out different result.

 

[BlackSEOBelt]

From my experience aHrefs.com tends to be a bit faster in finding new backlinks, althoug Majestics is also having some nice features...

Yes, Ahrefs is a cool backlink checker - the tool has a fast crawler that explores the whole Web for new links and accumulates all of them in their database. That's why with Ahrefs you can find more links than with Google's operators.

The only disadvantage of Ahrefs is its price.

Alternatively, you can try WebMeUp backlink tool - http://webmeup.com/tools/backlinks.html.
The app is integrated with the largest growing backlink database (at the moment it's not as big as Ahrefs, but it's growing) and is totally free now.

 

[Biznik]

Yes, Ahrefs is a cool backlink checker - the tool has a fast crawler that explores the whole Web for new links and accumulates all of them in their database. That's why with Ahrefs you can find more links than with Google's operators.

The only disadvantage of Ahrefs is its price.

Alternatively, you can try WebMeUp backlink tool - http://webmeup.com/tools/backlinks.html.
The app is integrated with the largest growing backlink database (at the moment it's not as big as Ahrefs, but it's growing) and is totally free now.

Yikes, that's even worse than Moz. I think it catches about the same amount of links as Google's link: operator.

 

[BlackSEOBelt]

Yikes, that's even worse than Moz. I think it catches about the same amount of links as Google's link: operator.

Which tool are you talking about? Ahrefs or Webmeup?

 

[Diaze]

The link command on google is limited it won't show all results. You are better off with with a solution like Ahref or Majestic Seo.