What is the difference?

[oneeye]

Hi All,

I am somewhat new to web development and really new to SEO. I have a two part question.

1) what is the difference between using +"www.mortgageratesgroup" and link:www.mortgagerates group to find how many inbound links you have? I have seen both of these used. Which is correct?

2)What is a reasonable amount of time to expect to wait for all those directory submissions to help improve your rankings? Assuming a site is accepted. 6 months/1year/2years.


Thanks,

Oneeye

www.mortgageratesgroup.com
www.beenbuzzed.com

[Mel]

Hi Oneeye
the + operator indicates a term must be included in the results while the Google link: operator is there to find those links which google is willing to show you.

I much prefer to use alltheweb to find out the true picture of how many links a site has, For an even better solution download the free link popularity checker from www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/ which will give youthe number of all your inbound links on several search engines.

Asking how long before the directory listing will kick in is sort of like asking how long is a piece of string.

DMOZ can take anywhere from one month to six months before your listing is included, and it may be a couple of more months after that before the search engines pick up the new listing and give you credit for it. Other directories will index you faster (especially if you pay them for inclusion) but none have as big an effect on your rankings as DMOZ.

[minstrel]

the + operator indicates a term must be included in the results while the Google link: operator is there to find those links which google is willing to show you.
Clarification:

link:www.beenbuzzed.com will reveal how many backlinks with a PR>X, where X is unknown but usually assumed to be 3 or 4 or thereabouts - Google calls this "a sample of links to your site"

+"www.beenbuzzed.com" will find all occurrences of the phrase inside the quotes (i.e., your domain name in this case) within the Google index, so it shows you all backlinks in the database


I much prefer to use alltheweb to find out the true picture of how many links a site has, For an even better solution download the free link popularity checker from www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/ which will give you the number of all your inbound links on several search engines.
But of course AllTheWeb isn't only giving you the backlinks Google knows about, and link poularity checker doesn't tell you what the backlinks are, only how many there are, so it all depends on what question you're asking...

[oneeye]

Thanks Mel, Minstrel,

I appreciate your feedback. The SEO mud is a little clearer today.

Oneeye

[achronister]

Another tidbit I heard from a Google engineer at the SES conference: Google is starting to randomize the results from both the link: command and the + command due to overuse. As stated in the Google help, "the results show a sampling of sites linking to you." Now when I run these commands, I get different results everytime so it's getting difficult to tell who is linking to you.

They did this to deter SEO's that were abusing PR ranking purchasing links.

Aaorn

[ronniethedodger]

Another tidbit I heard from a Google engineer at the SES conference: Google is starting to randomize the results from both the link: command and the + command due to overuse. As stated in the Google help, "the results show a sampling of sites linking to you." Now when I run these commands, I get different results everytime so it's getting difficult to tell who is linking to you.

They did this to deter SEO's that were abusing PR ranking purchasing links.

Aaorn

Thank you Aaron. That would explain my frustration yesterday when I and some others were looking at that very thing. Results were changing every time, just like you said.

BTW, you should get a name-checking dictionary. At least one that has the name Aaorn in it! ;0)

[Mel]

the + operator indicates a term must be included in the results while the Google link: operator is there to find those links which google is willing to show you.
Clarification:

link:www.beenbuzzed.com will reveal how many backlinks with a PR>X, where X is unknown but usually assumed to be 3 or 4 or thereabouts - Google calls this "a sample of links to your site"

+"www.beenbuzzed.com" will find all occurrences of the phrase inside the quotes (i.e., your domain name in this case) within the Google index, so it shows you all backlinks in the database


I much prefer to use alltheweb to find out the true picture of how many links a site has, For an even better solution download the free link popularity checker from www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/ which will give you the number of all your inbound links on several search engines.
But of course AllTheWeb isn't only giving you the backlinks Google knows about, and link poularity checker doesn't tell you what the backlinks are, only how many there are, so it all depends on what question you're asking...

I'm not so sure its as simple as that since the +"url" search fuctions as a Google text search while the link:URL function uses the Google data it has recorded for links to the page in question so I suspect that different databases are being accessed by each search.

A few quick tests seem to indicate that the +"URL" search does not find those anchor text links in which the URL is not visible to the browser.

You may want to test this out a bit yourself, but the +"URL" search on Google for a PR7 site with two such anchor text links on the home page did not return those links, only the linked page itself, while the link:URL on Google returned only two pages, the homepage with the links and one other page which contained links to that page.

Doing the link.all:URL -site:URL search on Alltheweb resulted in six valid external links to the page in question, while leaving off the -site function revealed ten pages linking to that page, 6 external to the site and 4 internal to the site.

I assume that since AlltheWeb and Google have nearly the same number of pages indexed both should know about roughly the same number of links to a particular page (if anything google should know about more links since that is basic to their PageRank algo).

I further assume that since Google acknowledges that they only present a sample of the links to a page, that they are not showing all the links they know about.

Thats why I prefer to use ATW to find out who is really linking to a site.

[ronniethedodger]

Thats why I prefer to use ATW to find out who is really linking to a site.

That is my preference too. Only for the mere fact that they return the higher number of links. Plus they reveal links that you would never have known about. You can find you link showing up in some strange places and have no idea why or how it got there.

It is apparant that Google is holding back on revealing links for some reason. But whatever that reason is, I will use Google to get at the links that are of more value. I use Google to find who my competitors linking partners are...and then go after them.

There are some links that will appear in ATW that you would never see at Google though. Those are links that are of some type of search query...and you link is on a url with all the ? + = signs all over it. They are very few and far between, but I have seen them. Other links are odd in appearance too.

So maybe there is some type of "credibility factor" that Google may place on a found link. I mean just because it smells like a link, and looks like a link, that doesn't mean Google has to believe it is link....does it?

Some links that I know that do not appear, if at all, are links on those damn rotating links pages. One day the link is on page one, the next it is on page 16. It rarely appears in Google, but it will surely show up at ATW...but the url will be to the wrong page, cuz it has been rotated. So in this case, I think Google is looking at the "staying" power of the link before it will even consider to be a link.

Just some of my observations.

[Mel]

I am losing confidence in the google link: search more and more.

For link:webworkshop.net google reports only 4 pages all internal to this PR6 site, but changing it to link:www.webworkshop.net produces 458 links.

Alltheweb provides 1182 external links to webworkshop.net and a further 756 links to www.webworkshop.net.

[minstrel]

Mel, using link:url with Google has for a long time returned very limited results and it is clear that whatever is being used as a filter (usually asumed to PR but not really known) this is not the syntax to use to find out what backlinks Google knows about. The major alternatives are "allinurl" and "+" but even these won't necessarily show you ALL the links pointing to your site.

As I said above, it depends what question you are asking: If you want to know who is linking to your website, then you and Ronnie are correct - AllTheWeb or AltaVista will give you a more complete list. However, I thought the original poster was trying to find out which links Google recognized - if that is the question, finding out what AllTheWeb or AktaVista knows won't give you the answer.

[Mel]

HI Minstrel
Perhaps I give Google perhaps more credit than it is due, but since we know it does not show us all the links it knows about, I assume its as good as Alltheweb and actually knows about all those links that ATW shows us. Even those links from pages without enough PR to show in the Google link search pass some PR and are even more important if they are anchor text links.

Perhaps not perfect but closer than what the Big G is trying to con us with.

[minstrel]

Under normal circumstances, for an average website, where there are no "Google" issues or concerns, you're probably correct.

However, if you're having a problem with Google listings, if you have a new site and wonder what is indexed in Google, if you are trying to find out which links might be contributing to PR, or some similar question, you need to get at least some idea of what Google's list is - that's what I meant. Simply, there are some situations where you won't find the information on other search engines - and the latest rumor has it that lately Google may be making it more difficult to find that information on Google.

[Mel]

I understand what you are saying Minstrel, but that link information simply is not readily available with the google link: search and the +"URL" search misses the most important links - the anchor text links.

[minstrel]

I agree, Mel - my apologies - it seems that "the 'flu that just won't end" is making my posts these days even more incomprehensible than normal ;o)

If your site doesn't have a problem with Google, I agree with everything you have said. Even if your site DOES have a problem with Google, using the procedures you suggest will probably help figure you to out why. But if your problem is with Google, then eventually you have to have a way to find out what it is that Google approves of and disapproves of or ignores with respect to your site so ultimately you need to find out what's in Google's databases.

The way things are going this week, I probably confused people even more with my clarification than before - but I do agree with your points, Mel (and others in this thread) - my intent was just to add a caution or limitation, not to dispute what you're saying.

[ronniethedodger]

The way things are going this week, I probably confused people even more with my clarification than before

Actually I am understanding you better now than ever before. Bad health to you! ;0)