We’ve been asked a lot recently by our SEO customers about the Link: command in Google and the fact that Google only shows a few links. Previously there have been a few comments on the internet about how Google has disabled this functionality but there was nothing official and Google did actually mention the Link: command as a valid operator on Google Webmaster tools.
Well, Matt Cutts from Google has posted a video about the Link: command this week which is on the Google Webmaster Help YouTube Channel.
Matt Cutts explains in this video that some time ago when the Link: operator was added to Google the primary focus was on providing services for normal search and not for some of these advanced services. At this time Google’s servers did not have the capacity to handle bringing back long queries in relation to the number of links that a given site has coming into it. Google now have a high capacity within their servers but have chosen to only show a small percentage of the backlinks any given website has. Their reason behind this is that showing all the links allows your competitors the ability to reverse engineer the links to your site and also gain these links themselves.
Google recommend using their Google Webmaster Tools which under the links section shows the number of links coming into the site.
However, using the Link: command is a useful way of seeing how you are doing in terms of the link building for your Search Engine Optimisation campaign. We’d recommend using Yahoo Site Explorer or a site like Backlink Watch to view the backlinks your site has achieved.
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