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Google's Link Command And Better Ways To Do It

Find Links To Your Site In Google

Originally Published: August 31, 2004

You probably know Google's link command. It's a special search query that allows you to find web sites that link to another web site.

For example, if you want to find web pages that link to Microsoft.com, enter "link:www.microsoft.com" in Google's search box.

Many links are missing in Google's link search

Unfortunately, Google's link command is not as useful as it used to be. It doesn't show all pages that are linking to yours. Actually, Google shows only a small selection.

Google's search results pages show only a sample of the links that point to a page, so this list is in no way indicative of the link structure utilized by Google to formulate a page's PageRank.

PageRank 4 and higher? That used to be.

Many people think that Google's link command only returns links from web pages that have a PageRank of 4 or higher. That's not true.

Although many of the returned web pages have a PageRank of 4 and higher, Google doesn't show every web page with a PageRank of 4 or higher that links to you.

Google also often returns pages with a PageRank below 4. You can quickly verify this by visiting some of the returned pages.

There's a better way to find who links to your site on Google

To obtain a more accurate list of the links that point to your page, perform a Google search on your URL.

Click the "Find the web pages that contain the term" link on the result page and Google will provide you with the web pages that mention the address.

To remove pages from your own web site from the results, add the term
"-site:yourURL.com" to the query in the search box.

You might also get a few sites that just mention your web site URL without actually having a link. However, the results are still much better than the results of the standard Google link command.

How to quickly check the link popularity of many web sites at once

If you want to check the link popularity of many web sites at once, take a look at the free software program Link Popularity Check (LPC). It's now available in version 3.

LPC checks the link popularity on many search engines at once and it allows you to quickly compare the results for your web site with the results for your competitors.

Copyright by Axandra.com, publishers of:

• IBP All In One Promotion Software
  All You Need To Get Top 10 Rankings On Google And Yahoo!
• Successful Advertising With Google's AdWords
  How To Optimize Your Pay Per Click Campaigns
• Marketing ROI Optimizer
  Lower Your Costs And Increase Your Profits

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May 12 2008 09:27 UTC