Backlinks-Crawling vs Indexing

I keep seeing people whining about not being able to get their backlinks indexed and whining about various services and such because the backlinks are not showing up in Google or Yahoo.

You are wasting your time worrying about this.

Case in point

Site 1 has nearly 10k backlinks. Ranks #3 for a competitive keyword.

Yahoo shows that there are 1400 backlinks
Google says there is 1

Site 2 has well over 5k backlinks.

Yahoo says that there are 164 links
Google says there is one.

Now for site #2 I had a keyword that has been stuck at #44 for a couple of months. About a month ago I created several Wiki articles and links from about 30 sites. I also have around 100 .edu links for the site.

After the Wiki links, the site jumped from 44 to 28 for that keyword. Not one wiki site or .edu shows up in either Yahoo or Google. Hmmmm.

Everybody knows, or should know that Google does not show you everything or our jobs would be a whole lot easier. Yet you go to Yahoo to see if your links are indexed. What has that got to do with Google? Do you really believe that if Yahoo has links indexed that Google will too? They are totally different search engines if you have not noticed.

My point is, so many of you are Wasting your time daily trying to figure out how to get the links to show up. I am willing to bet that you spend at a minimum 30 minutes to an hour if not more trying to figure this out. I figured out long ago that neither search engine will tell you everything so I quit worrying about it. Why do you think that a site with 20 links ranks #1 while a site with 20k ranks #2 and on page is nearly identical for both?

You keep building backlinks and your serps rise and it is not because of the one or two that show up in the "link:" searches but because of all of them.

You can not control what the search engines do but now the only thing I do is Ping the urls unless it is a blog comment, I leave those to be found over time. Most of the time this happens quickly because of all the people commenting and then pinging the same url I commented on. I only ping them one time and then move on. I will never know when or if they get crawled but I will waste a lot of time working on this. The only thing that I notice is when the serps rise.

The only thing I worry about is getting the URL crawled. Once that happens, the search engines know about your link.

I did another Wiki blast to the same site for another keyword 3 days ago and now there are 4 keywords on the front page and those links are not indexed. How did that happen? If you think about it and use a little common sense, you will see what is happening.

Stop wasting time and go do something more productive like adding content and/or building more links. And quit complaining about all the service providers not getting your links indexed, you are cluttering up their sales threads.

thanks for the great post. really.... google ... they are brilliant..

I agree with this post and for that reason I see "indexing" differently than most as well.

I feel "indexing" is getting the most out of my links that are Tier 1 to my money site. By this I don't mean they need to show up in Google webmaster tools or YSE, but, instead I make sure that they've been pinged AND backlinked to as well. This way it seems you'll get the most you can out of your links, especially the bigger content property backlinks, not just bookmarks or a blog comment, but your web2.0s, press releases, and articles.

Ranking in the Search Engines Rules!

An excellent tutorial for just about anyone... the search engines would have to be on drugs to show you everything that is backlinked to your sites.

Indexing is nice; crawling is absolutely necessary as if the site/page is crawled the link is seen and that is one of the reasons the site/page gets crawled... to recognize the link and give it credence.

That is why linklicious is one of my favorite tools as it guarantees that your site/pages get crawled.

Get your backlinks crawled and don't worry what shows up as indexed; concern yourself with getting ranked.

Absolutely great post. Thanks given. I totally agree with you on this

SEOhopeful said:

I agree with this post and for that reason I see "indexing" differently than most as well.

I feel "indexing" is getting the most out of my links that are Tier 1 to my money site. By this I don't mean they need to show up in Google webmaster tools or YSE, but, instead I make sure that they've been pinged AND backlinked to as well. This way it seems you'll get the most you can out of your links, especially the bigger content property backlinks, not just bookmarks or a blog comment, but your web2.0s, press releases, and articles.

Click to expand...

Good thinking but you have to be careful with this too. You can outrank your own site with too many back links if the linking property is strong enough on it's own. The Wiki articles are powerful on their own and all I did was ping them. Not that they would out rank the site but because I want some links without backlinks. I may pick one or 2 out of the bunch and back link those just to mix things up.

TNphoneman & BassTrackerBoats both have valid points.

TN - I love this 'unless it is a blog comment, I leave those to be found over time. Most of the time this happens quickly because of all the people commenting and then pinging the same url I commented on'
- So obvious but I didn't even think like that, I have however today decided not to bother trying to get my comments crawled as I have seen no realistic difference between when I've tried to get them crawled and not (Oh the time I will save)

Both of these guys have hit the nail on the head, these SE's couldn't possibly show them all, even if they wanted to.

I think these engines do tend to show a certain number of links per type though. For eg: You get 20 .edus and you might see one but you'll v likely get the juice from 8.

Thanks TN

Yes, an informative post.

My top site, on a two-word string with 54K competing pages, ranks on the first page of Google with 0 reported inbound links.

Kid Shaleen said:

Yes, an informative post.

My top site, on a two-word string with 54K competing pages, ranks on the first page of Google with 0 reported inbound links.

Click to expand...

Outstanding example of the indexing myth that is running around unbridled.

BassTrackerBoats said:

Ranking in the Search Engines Rules!

An excellent tutorial for just about anyone... the search engines would have to be on drugs to show you everything that is backlinked to your sites.

Indexing is nice; crawling is absolutely necessary as if the site/page is crawled the link is seen and that is one of the reasons the site/page gets crawled... to recognize the link and give it credence.

That is why linklicious is one of my favorite tools as it guarantees that your site/pages get crawled.

Get your backlinks crawled and don't worry what shows up as indexed; concern yourself with getting ranked.

Click to expand...

Exactly, man I've been preaching this for so long that my head hurts lol. I'm glad to see other like minded people in this thread and glad you enjoy our service

i'm going to play the devil's advocate

Not all links are valued equally, and "indexed" may be one way to tell which ones are valued more than others.

20k profile links that you created overnight are not going to be worth the same as 20 links from high authority sites that aren't link farms that give good links in the middle of the content back to your site.

Which ones do you think will get indexed? Which ones would you want pointed at your site?

Indexing is like Google's stamp of approval.

It's the same idea behind a link pyramid - you are building authority for the sites that link to yours.

Do they HAVE to get indexed to be worth something? No...
Do you WANT them indexed to be worth more? Yeah...I think so

I think the whole "indexing" thing went completely beserk with "indexing" services costing more than the services placing the links in the first place.

People were sending web2 links to their profile links to try and index then, absolutely absurd.

You should link your lowest quality links up to something better, each tier should be superiour to the one below it.

Tiering profiles for "indexing" is also stupid, you may be linking an indexed profile to one that will never index, or if the upper profiles get zapped you lose everything below them.

When all is said and one, most of the "indexing hype" was about... selling indexing services.

For me services like LinkLicious are the only viable option as they are cheap and hands off, you can add them to your setup cheaply and painlessly and forget about it.

As someone else said you really want to be looking at the sites further up the tree, and how you can add value to that rather then looking down and down looking for ever lower levels of crap to prop up your bottom tiers.

This brings up another interesting question... How many tiers is too many? There has to be a point where there are diminishing returns that are not worth the effort.

You all know that I use linkpushing for my sites and when that is done I blast 50-100 blog comments with scrapebox to every linkpush property. That can make a single path to my site 6 layers deep. Personally I feel that after that you are wasting time and money going any deeper. I also use some software to get links that are only one layer deep.(not scrapebox) These are all high pr with some .edu and .gov thrown in the mix. I ping those one time and leave them alone.

For me services like LinkLicious are the only viable option as they are cheap and hands off, you can add them to your setup cheaply and painlessly and forget about it.

Click to expand...

That is it, getting them crawled is more important than getting them indexed.

efwebs said:

i'm going to play the devil's advocate

Not all links are valued equally, and "indexed" may be one way to tell which ones are valued more than others.

20k profile links that you created overnight are not going to be worth the same as 20 links from high authority sites that aren't link farms that give good links in the middle of the content back to your site.

Which ones do you think will get indexed? Which ones would you want pointed at your site?

Indexing is like Google's stamp of approval.

It's the same idea behind a link pyramid - you are building authority for the sites that link to yours.

Do they HAVE to get indexed to be worth something? No...
Do you WANT them indexed to be worth more? Yeah...I think so

Click to expand...

The thing is, you really do not know what they are doing. I have some pretty crappy links showing up in Google while the high pr and the .edu and .gov sites are not there.

What you really need to watch is the serp position. Don't throw everything including the kitchen sink at the site without first testing to see if it works. I know what kind of movement I get from linkpushing and when I try something new and it takes a big jump, I know that Google has found them.

I ping one time and one time only. Continuously pinging your backlinks can do the same damage to them as you can do to your sites and get them flagged as spam.

Treat your backlinks with care so they don't get devalued with the next Koala(or whatever they name it) update and you don't have to start a thread whining about how all your sites dropped in the serps. None of my sites have been hurt by the Panda updates.

TNphoneman said:

That is it, getting them crawled is more important than getting them indexed.

Click to expand...

Definitely, indexing is icing on the cake...its great...but you don't NEED it to feed the party

thank bro

TNphoneman said:

The thing is, you really do not know what they are doing. I have some pretty crappy links showing up in Google while the high pr and the .edu and .gov sites are not there.

What you really need to watch is the serp position. Don't throw everything including the kitchen sink at the site without first testing to see if it works. I know what kind of movement I get from linkpushing and when I try something new and it takes a big jump, I know that Google has found them.

I ping one time and one time only. Continuously pinging your backlinks can do the same damage to them as you can do to your sites and get them flagged as spam.

Treat your backlinks with care so they don't get devalued with the next Koala(or whatever they name it) update and you don't have to start a thread whining about how all your sites dropped in the serps. None of my sites have been hurt by the Panda updates.

Click to expand...

I agree with everything you said except the pinging one time only. We have pinged bajillions of links and not once have we seen it ever result in a penalty of any kind.

You can ping TOO MANY LINKS... (Which is why we created a drippable option) But never have we seen any penalties for pinging one link multiple times prior to being crawled. And we keep records of everything.

You can spend forever trying to index links dont bother move on.

linklicious


50,000 Links per day

but does that mean 50k links get crawled a day?

supamanjon said:

linklicious


50,000 Links per day

but does that mean 50k links get crawled a day?

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No, we shoot to have 90-95% crawled 24hrs after going live but we do track it and ping until ALL are crawled. Now, that being said...I wouldn't recommend trying to get 50K Crawled in one day unless you love building sand castles