Google penalty or paranoia?

[amxfan]

For a while now I have been watching my backlinks on Google by doing the standard link:www.yourdomain.com. I have been noticing the amount of links Google is counting from my site (actual site links). In watching this I am seeing those numbers decrease very slowly to the point to where I am down to one. I have checked all over the internet as to reasons why, I have asked on Google forums and the response I got there was the standard 'Google does not display all the backlinks that it sees'. I know Google does not display them all, but there has to be a reason why if you go on any other site and check for backlinks Google displays 20-30+ backlinks that are actual sitelinks. Google only displays one of mine. Some of the pages that are not being displayed do rank on the first page of Google for the key word that I am going after, but I am unable to rank for any difficult keywords. Do you think that I am just being paranoid or do you see or know of a reason of why Google is not counting links from this site?

The site in question is http://www.candlelightfashions.com

Any and all ideas / statements / guesses / anything are appreciated.

[crankydave]

You're being paranoid.

Right now, I see Google showing 10 with the site: operator.

Dave

[cw1865]

Your pages are cached three deep, google sees it.....

When you're going from your category page into your products you're linking from the picture. Also link from the text as well and get some alt tags on the images...

[Big Juice]

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,510 from w w w.candlelightfashions.com. (0.15 seconds)

I get the same number regardless of using the site:h t t p://w w w. or site:www. or site:domain

Are you logged into your Google account while doing your searches?

[jawn_tech]

I'm also seeing 10 backlinks in Google.

That is, originally 7, but with the standard message at the bottom, "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 7 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

Clicking that then gave me 10.

So like they say in star trek, 'stand down red alert'. Just paranoia, but healthy paranoia. It's good to keep a close eye on things as important as backlinks and start asking questions when things change.

[incrediblehelp]

Well the the site operator is not accurate so I would not worry about it.

[amxfan]

First off I would like to personally thank everyone for replying. What got me into this state is that a few months ago when link:www.candlelightfashions.com was checked it showed 1-10 of 12. It has been slowly dropping and the ones dropping off for the most part are the links coming from the site itself. But yes when a site:www.candlelightfashions.com is done it shows most of the site pages. So yes I got real worried and still am to be honest.

Next question. I started a second site using that same template "www.thehighheelstore.com". It has the same type of products but different products themselves. I did also put a link to Candlelight Fashions from this site at the bottom of every page. Google as of yet does not count these links. So is this site hurting me or helping me as far as backlinks go?

[Peter (IMC)]

I guess he's asking about the number of backlinks, not about the number of indexed pages.

Try using http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ to see how many backlinks Google really has. Besides that, promote your website a bit here and there. Always goes a long way.

[davidweb]

The best way to track back links is doing search on google with yourwebsite . com

Google in the past is trying to hide several major aspects of search engine rankings, and this also includes back linking information.

Google doesnt want anybody to trace back links of another website in order to score higher rankings. However you can search for back links by doing search for yourwebsite . com.

Link : yourwebsite . com doesnt show complete information. It is just a snapshot of your wide linking network. Even if you have 1000, it will display not more than 30.

[Clarrie]

Originally Posted by amxfan

Next question. I started a second site using that same template "www.thehighheelstore.com". It has the same type of products but different products themselves. I did also put a link to Candlelight Fashions from this site at the bottom of every page. Google as of yet does not count these links. So is this site hurting me or helping me as far as backlinks go?

Google filters links based on the relevance of the source and target pages. That might be one reason.

But there are other filters as well - site-wide links are usually only counted once. Although I can't verify this for certain, I think they also filter out site-wide links from one site to another on the same server, which is more likely in your case.

Don't think it will hurt you (web designers mostly do it as a matter of course) but it won't help you. but if you are concerned you could add rel="nofollow" to the links.

[amxfan]

Peter

Sorry for the confusion but yes I have been asking about backlinks.

Clarrie

I do not want to use a no-follow because I do want the links to help my PR. But I believe that using the same template is hurting me on that point. No they are not on the same ip address.

davidweb

I have to disagree with you on that point it will display more then 30. This was taken from a link:www.webproworld.com Results 1 - 10 of about 2,470

Thank you all
I'm not trying to sound argumentative, I'm just worried and confused. Your help is really appreciated.

[incrediblehelp]

amxfan have you been buying links?

[amxfan]

Buying links no.

But I have started a few different sites and have put a link from them to the one in question. But my link had started to drop off before I started these sites. This is one reason why I put the link one then to help my backlinks.

www.thehighheelstore.com
www.thesensualtouch.com
www.hitmanseo.com <--- directory, work in progress. may sell site due to it is way off topic.


Daughters blog
www.thegrapevinereport.com

[incrediblehelp]

So do you have this network of websites for the purpose of creating artificial link juice to each website?

[amxfan]

Not for link juice, no as the sites are new and have low or no page rank. The sites were originally created because they sell different products and if I added the products all to one site, it would make the amount of products on that site hard to browse through "who wants to look through 20 pages to find one pair?". The sites were created to help my visitors. The backlinks were there to help visitors go from one site to the other. If PR is transferred, this is only a plus, and to be honest yes increasing my backlinks was also in mind as mine were dropping off.
My linking scheme is used by many large corporations. Microsoft's main site lists all the products, then goes out and has smaller sites which are product specific. I tried to replicate that. Candlelight carries products from one manufacturer and selected items from the other two sites. The other two sites are specific toward manufacturer and product. This also has worked out for my competition who is ranked #1 (ie Dimoutgifts.com is linked to Dimout.com and Dimoutshoes.com).

Artificially inflate my PR ranking...would it be different if each of these sites were owned by someone else? I can change the registrant, I can change the template. But that is wrong. My goal is to help my visitors first. But yes I keep backlinks in the back of my mind.

Would you suggest instead of having a link from the bottom of every page, only have one or two links from specific pages? Would this be better? Or is using the same template killing me?

[incrediblehelp]

After reviewing the website I am guessing Google just doesnt feel the websites are all that important anymore.

[amxfan]

no what I wanted to hear... But honest.

Thank you.

now it fix it somehow.