How to check for links pointing to my site

[Rahvelle]

I know there is a search that you can do in Google for links pointing to your site (link:url) but when I do that I find 2 strange things.
1. Sites are pointing to me that I never knew about (great!)
2. Sites that I know are pointing to me do not show up as doing such (not so great)

I spent a whole lot of time getting those "high quality relevant links" we hear so much about yet according to my search, Google is not seeing that any of these sites point to me.

I've checked on the links and they're there, nice friendly text links... so what's the deal?

Any thoughts on why this is happening? Any other ways I might be able to see if Google is recognizing these links (or get them to do it!)? Any help is appreciated, and thanks!

[minstrel]

Google only lists "a sample" of the links pointing to you when you use that syntax (link:yourdomain.com).

For a more complete list, try this:

+"www.yourdomain.com"

Include the quotation marks and note that the + sign comes before the first "

[Rahvelle]

I tried your suggestion - I got more links back but they were mostly pages from my own site. Still no sign of all these cross-links that are out there. Thanks for your help though, you were right that it showed more results.

[minstrel]

Hmmm... is it possible Google is filtering out those links? see the various threads on "Google Dance", etc., in the Google forum...

[greeneagle]

Go to http://www.alexa.com/
Type in or paste URL in this format www.google.com
You can get lesser results by dropping prefix "www".
Click "Go" and scroll down until you see "Site Stats":
Site Stats for google.com:
Traffic Rank for google.com: 4
Other sites that link to this site: 283,780
Speed: Very Fast (85th percentile)
Online Since: 15-Sep-1997
The number beside "Other sites that link to this site:" will be hyperlinked.
Select hyperlinked number and Walla!
Even these are incomplete, but much more complete than GOOGLE.

Hope this helps
Ken