Google provides backlink tool for site owners
One of the common requests I hear from webmasters is “Why doesn’t Google show me most or all of my backlinks?” Well, as of today, Google’s webmaster console will now let you see your site’s backlinks. Major props to the webmaster console team for this new feature. A few things to know:
- The backlink tool doesn’t show 100% of the backlinks from Google yet, but I expect the number of links that are available to grow.
- In particular, for my site I was easily able to see more than 10x more links in this new tool than the link: command gave me. The link: command has always returned a small fraction of the backlinks that Google knows about, mainly for historical reasons (e.g. limited disk space on the machines that served up “link:” data).
- You can download the backlinks in a really nice CSV format, suitable for slicing and dicing and other analysis. I believe you can export up to a million backlinks if your site has that many backlinks. 
- Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight. I’m going to say that again: Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight. Sometime in the next year, someone will say “But I saw an insert-link-fad-here backlink show up in Google’s backlink tool, so it must count. Right?” And then I’ll point them back here, where I say do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight.
I’m sure that there was more that I wanted to say, but why don’t people start playing with it and give feedback or post backlink tool-related questions? I know that the webmaster team reads to get feedback over here too; congrats again to that entire team for providing this. If you want to start browsing your site’s backlinks, sign up for Google’s webmaster console now.
Ulf Liljankoski Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 12:20 am
Great! I’ve been waiting for this to happen.
I do not assume that just because I see a backlink, it’s carrying weight - but it does make me grow as a person.
Harith Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 12:22 am
Matt
Have visited the webmaster consol. Very nice adition indeed. However, few questions:
“Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight.”
- Does that apply also to the backlinks we see on link: operator?
- Or… should we regard link: operator dead
Alden Bates Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 12:27 am
Sweeeeet! I knew my site had more than three backlinks. I think I actually prefer this to Yahoo’s version too.
RogerW Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 12:43 am
>do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight.
Indeed, because even links with the “nofollow” attribute are being shown.
Kia Niskavaara Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 12:46 am
I’ve been using Referer.org for this purpose for a long time (almost a year I think). Referer.org have the same features as Google, but also includes an invaluable service to me - RSS feeds. By subscribing to the RSS feed for my own pages I get a notification whenever I get a new link to my page, including a screenshot of the page. And it optionally lets me put the list of referrers on my own page. When can I expect that Google gives me notifications when I get a new referrer?
George Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 12:48 am
Great to see more information coming out in the console, and a very useful tool for performing analysis on site content.
For me a good enhancement would be the ability to filter by the life of the link. Don’t get me wrong though - this is great.
How long before a full blown API to the entire schema I wonder…
tony stagg Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 12:50 am
Hi Matt
Do links pointing to images count as linbound links. They are listed in Yahoo tool but not in Google links tool.
shane Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 1:02 am
Great addition..
Does this include rel=nofollow links? I realise google woulnd’t follow or assign any weight to these links, but that doesnt mean it wouldn’t record the link against the url nonetheless.
Dave (Original) Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 1:05 am
ALL links from other sites are considered “inbound links”. Which links actually help with rankings though…………………….who cares!
I would say this though, if you requested the link, or added it yourself, I doubt it carries any weight.
IMO the best links are the ones you don’t even know about from simliar sites and on a *content* page.
Mike Empuria Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 1:05 am
This is a great addition to Webmaster Central. Can you thank Vanessa and team for us?
Now, I wonder if the backlinks are carrying weight?
Dominykas Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 1:10 am
Every time I start to think that there is a chance that Google is evil, they go and do something small but nice like this…
Green Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 1:12 am
Well it lists even nofollow links. I guess it is true that not every link counts.
Kenneth Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 1:23 am
I’ve been hoping it would come a tool like this soon. I will most certaintly be using it..
Dyce Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 1:33 am
Very nice addition there, well done Google am liking that
Any chance for the future that the links would display a sorta ranking based around how much they benefit the site?
hehe Or perhaps whether Google considers them good, bad or ugly?
Might help webmasters further if they had a good/trustworthy definition of what Google thinks is a worthwhile link… and what is totally useless. Nothing set in stone… but a guide.
Sebastian Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 1:46 am
Harith, you can get an idea of the weight your IBLs carry when you download your links to feed a pretty simple bot fetching the anchor texts and link attributes as well from the source pages. Pay attention to the robots META tag, and the link’s type-of-forward-relationship attribute, extract all values beginning with “no*”. Should give a really nice statistic.
But that’s just the beginning. Way more interesting than possibly passed page rank is an overview like which sites link with which anchor text from related pages (same or similar topic) to my pages and such stuff. Once you’ve fetched and stored all foreign pages linking to you, you can do awesome stuff, what is not possible with site explorer downloads due to the niggardly limitations.
Thanks Vanessa and fellows, that’s a really great and extremely useful tool. I’d like to have the date Googlebot has discovered each link, but I can live without this info (which I can guess quite accurate) for a while
Jojo Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 1:54 am
“The link: command has always returned a small fraction of the backlinks that Google knows about, mainly for historical reasons (e.g. limited disk space on the machines that served up “link:” data).” - So, why don´t you turn on the link: command again. Still not enough disk space ……
Teodor Filimon Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 1:55 am
Nice feature indeed, i asked for it on the group myself. It’s nice to see backlinks from that point of view, especially since i saw all kinds of weird words in links to my site, so it’s good to see who uses what to link to me (especially since ‘link:’ operators don’t show all my backlinks). Many thanks!
David Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 2:03 am
Unfortunately a lot of internal links show up as external links, too.
@Mike I assume that every backlink you see at the webmaster console is carrying weight. Why should google bother to compute those links make them visible and then just not count them?
Jeremy Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 2:05 am
Very nice addition. As an enhancement it would be nice if you could sort by the number of links.
David Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 2:06 am
To the guy reading this the next year:
You probably forgot to pay google for your pagerank. You can use either paypal (which is by know owned by google) or visa (which is owned by M.C. himself by now, he found out about their great revenue two years ago ;-)).
Once your payment is made google will count these links again. For a small extra fee google bot will even refresh your backlinks and reindex your pages.
Milan Kryl Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 2:14 am
Nice job!
It would be much better, if I can sort by number of backlinks.
Joni Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 2:19 am
Wow this is good news. I love this new feature! Thanks, Google.
Henry Elliss Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 2:23 am
Excellent stuff, I am continually impressed at the new stuff being added to the Webmaster Tools.
It’s too early for any intelligent questions - I even had problems with the spam protection sum (5+8!!)
Henry
Reik Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 2:24 am
Nice tool. I really like that Google is developing all these tools for webmasters, even though they would probably not need them theirselfs. I already got a change request
Its hard to browse through all links of a specific page if the page has a few thousand backlinks from the same domain. There should be an option that allows you to see only one backlink per domain. While you’re at it, clicking that domain should expand to display all the remaining links for that domain 
Duncan Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 2:27 am
I hate leaving comments where I seem to kiss the rear of Google all the time, but I have to, this new tool is great.
Not only does it provide an excellent insight into how my (and my clients) websites are linked but it also just alerted me to a possible issue with incorrectly aliased domain names for a client, which I had not been aware of.
So, thanks Google!
wingthom Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 2:28 am
Thanks a lot for this huge improvement. It is good to see that Google is still listening to the White Hat People and not only fightin’ the Black Hat guys.
Duncan Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 2:28 am
Actually though it would be better if I were able to increase the number of backlinks on one page to all and also alter the sort
SEO-Tools Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 2:40 am
Hi,
good Job. Hope the results are not out of date…
I don’t need results from Nov 2006
Philipp Lenssen Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 2:53 am
Cool feature, minor item for improvement: make one’s owns URLs linked, too. Right now, I see
pages … external links
blog.outer-court.com/foo … 123
blog.outer-court.com/bar … 345
… but I can’t click on “blog.outer-court.com/foo” (I have to copy and paste the URL). When I see something like “blog.outer-court.com/archive/2003_05_07_index.html … 123 backlinks” I may not instantly know what this page was about, but I might want to find out why it received these 123 backlinks.
The other feature request is that I’d like to sort my pages by external links, e.g. by clicking on “external links”, most-linked first.
Keith Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 3:02 am
“Free at last!” I think is the quote…finally a way to stop people staring at the little green bar waiting for it to move…but, as you indeed make clear, not every link is equal is it…
Well done to the team…it seems to work pretty well…
Rxbbx Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 3:09 am
It would be nice two have more tools in the console. Everything centralized at one place..
N Katz Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 3:22 am
Really great tool. I just used it to check my backlinks and found some guy who is stealing my entire site (www.cp65.com) except that adsense account in the site is now his and not mine, so he is making money and I’m not. Any suggestions on how to stop this and protect against it in the future?
here is the URL of my stolen site:
http://netroot.zgan.org:1280/proxy/nph-proxy.cgi/000111A/http/www.cp65.com
Bogdan Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 3:36 am
i subscribe to Dyce suggestion regarding a way to differentiate the “good” links. anyway, thx for the new tool to play!
German Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 3:55 am
Matt,
I can’t play with the tool. I have set up my website to redirect all inexistent pages to the homepage to get Google rid of non existing pages (which I can’t put a noindex meta because they did not exist).
As a consequence of the redirect, the site does not verify.
I will never play with the console then and rather let the others doing so.
Adam Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 3:58 am
Very nice to be able to see this data at last. Thanks for all the work Google guys!
Cheatz Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 4:01 am
Excellent stuff, I am continually impressed at the new stuff being added to the Webmaster Tools.
It’s too early for any intelligent questions greats alex
Rommi Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 4:06 am
Does the backlink tool show a links to non front pages (like yahoo or msn ‘linkdoman’) ?
Michael Brandon Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 4:21 am
Wow. That is very cool. Internal as well as external links, ability to download. Able to see the url’s that Google has for a site…
And just checked out adding a competitors website - I can’t see the stats for his site, so cool to have the privacy. Not sure why the info could not be included in the public link command though, since the information is partially publically available via yahoo and msn. But the privacy is good.
All the nice to have’s now pop into mind as mentioned above.
- link text
- Google PR
- whether the link is rel=nofollow
(we can get the above if we spider ourselves - but why should we need to when Google has the information)
- issues or penalties applied to various links.
When analysing client websites, it would be good to know more about linking penalties. I want to help them, and never easy to determine specifically what is wrong with sites after you have done the basics of SEO. I know that its part of the secret sauce, and that until now, only limited information about penalties has been shown on the webmaster console. With linking being such a black art - so essential yet so easy to get wrong, it would be nice to know when you had overstepped the mark in that area.
Astounded that diskspace was an issue. At long last we have mention from Google that its resources are not unlimited. But I must say, this new initiative must take up some storage space! Thats a good amount of data. Thanks.
walkman Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 4:25 am
Matt,
a site links to me as nofollow (which is what I wanted) yet it shows as a backlink /s. Will this hurt me, *assuming* that too many links from certain sites hurt rankings?
thanks,
Jean Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 4:27 am
Oh no! There are backlinks to my site with things like fascism and sex knowledge in the url. I do hope that Google recognises them as Wikipedia clones and discounts them.
Seriously - this is a useful tool. Thanks very much.
There is a slight problem with dynamic sites. For example - for one of my pages, the tool is showing 15 links from a local government site and 10 from intute.ac.uk, which I would count as one each. It is just their search tool throwing up different ways to get to the page.
Doug Heil Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 4:33 am
Can you see me chuckling? I am.
Google has “always” been super duper great at public relations and creating a webmaster/owner buzz. This is a super PR buzz indeedy! LOL
I guess this new tool is good for people to play around with, but useful? I think some of you need to actually get out more.
Google states that the backlinks shown all pass different weights and some pass NO weight at all, so using the word “useful” is kind of not helpful. Even the link command has never been useful as the links shown “may or may not” be passing any juice. The word I would use for the new tool is “fun”.
In my opinion this simply creates a whole new way of complaining about your positions in the serps and asking the question of… “Google shows 10 kazillion backlinks to my site but I am nowhere to be found on my main keywords” !!! WHY?”
It really makes no diff what disclaimer Matt and Google puts on this new tool as the questions will still come fast and furious.
Kudos to Google for knowing what trips the triggers and the buttons of the webmasters and site owners!
Useful?… erm, hmm, erm, hmm, …… I say “fun”.
Michael Brandon Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 4:34 am
While we are on the subject of the webmaster console:
- Why is the highest PR page of my domain, shown to be a sub domain page??? Should only show the specific domain, and not subdomain information???
azzam Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 4:40 am
This is an excellent tool. Previously i was using marketleap.com and it showed that google provided some backlinks to the site but when i went to link: http://www.mysite.com is came up zero ???? and now! WOW thanks google and for the heads up Matt
Doug Heil Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 4:45 am
Hi Matt from the post above;
a site links to me as nofollow (which is what I wanted) yet it shows as a backlink /s. Will this hurt me, *assuming* that too many links from certain sites hurt rankings?
I had to reply. See my post above. This is the type of thing I’m referring to. Google is going to show you any and all links as backlinks. Google knows about the backlink whether or not it’s a nofollow link. As has been stated by Matt and Google, just because a link is shown to you does not mean it’s doing anything for you. You are right to state that a site linking to you “might” hurt you in some way, but don’t believe for a minute that Google is going to tell you which links are doing what, where, when, how, and why for your site.
The tool is “fun”.
Jarid Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 5:11 am
One feature suggestion:
Let site owners tag bad links as spam.
For example, many sites scrape Google search results and use that as their ‘content’. Google could use this new tool to have webmasters help identify these sites.
Chris Dohman Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 5:20 am
nice to have the new link info. i would like to see the link data grouped by domain with link totals for each domain linking to you, then be able to drill down to see the individual pages linking to you.
Deb Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 5:30 am
Matt
thanks to u and google and google webmaster team, nice tool, it helps me
my query is that the links showed by google are indexed only by google or it’s shows any search engine can indexed (the links)?
thanks
Deb
Hagrin Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 5:35 am
Excellent tool Matt, thank you.
As a very strange corollary to this tool, I was able to find a few sites that were scraping my content in full that I hadn’t caught before.
Like the others said, if you could add the ability to sort the # of backlinks column that would make the tool even just a little more functional.
Aaron Pratt Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 5:44 am
Throwing spammers a bone?
alecs Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 6:04 am
Thanks for the new tool info!
I think it’s great for webmasters to have knowledge about their inbound links and have this information private at the same time.
There were also some “nofollow” inbound links listed which I think is a good thing.
Chadon Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 6:09 am
I discovered Google’s webmasters tool with the help of this article and there is great ones there. But the baclink one is useless in my opinion. If the links can’t be listed by weight what is the need of that? I will continue to use MSN’s linkback query in the future.
William Rock Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 6:24 am
Great Addition to the Tools, Thx
Keep up the Great work!
gices Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 6:25 am
From your quote “Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight”, how can we know for sure that a backlink is carrying weight then? Is there a way to find out how?
And from Walkman question and Doug reply, i thought that a rel-nofollow attribute means that Google should not follow that link at all, how come it’s still showing as backlink then (To me it seems as if Google has followed the link).
SEO Ruby Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 6:47 am
This is great! Thanks for the post Matt!
Zach Katkin Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 6:48 am
Just noticed the tool yesterday and already checked it out on all of my domains, very nice and helpful. Thanks for opening up the link info.
Lino Uruñuela Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 6:55 am
In my account of Google SiteMap in view external link, if I change the second parameter of the URL mydomain.com to otherdomain.com I can see all the back links¡¡
This information should be privated, no?
sorry by my english.
Lino Uruñuela of Spain
Randy Heimann Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 6:57 am
It’s nice to finally see how many links Google sees. Yes I know, it doesn’t mean they all carry weight, but it does shed some light on the mystery of Google’s view on backlinks. It will help me out as well. Now I can compare the links Google sees in all and the ones Google deems worthy to my site.
Thanks!!
sherrillh Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 6:57 am
I was playing with this yesterday afternoon Matt and was wondering why you hadn’t mentioned it here;)
This indeed is a very welcome tool and helpful, although it would be nice to seperate which links are nofollow, but I’m not going to complain. (yet)
I really like being able to see what pages people are linking to, this way if someone is linking to a discontinued page I can ask them to correct the link.
Tell the Team I give them a thumbs up, great job.
Doug Heil Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:04 am
LOL Aaron. It certainly gives the link mongers something more to discuss.
ERRIOXA Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:06 am
There is a bug in the Google Sitemaps.
If you click to view the backlinks, after you change the URL in the second time, where it(he,she) puts mydomain.com you put another domain and it gives you his backlinks.
Pittbug Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:14 am
This is a great addition, what determines the order of the links? They don’t appear to be in order by alphabetical, PageRank, or last found. Can you give us any indications?
I like that you’ve grouped all the links from the same domain together. Did you consider collapsing links from the same domain, then providing an indication of how many links are from that domain and an icon to expand them? So you could have a list of links like this:
[ 76 ] http://www.forum1.com
[187] http://www.forum2.com
etc
Chris Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:15 am
Feature Request: All sorting based on link quantity.
Chris Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:16 am
Should have read;
Feature Request: Allow sorting based on link quantity.
Mick Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:17 am
Matt, will the number of pages listed for a site grow with time?
At the moment I see around half for one site not listed. This site shows roughly the right amount in the index when doing a site:www.blahblah.com search plus it has a sitemap listed in the webmaster console.
Doug Heil Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:17 am
This is a great addition, what determines the order of the links? They don’t appear to be in order by alphabetical, PageRank, or last found. Can you give us any indications?
I’d say that answer would be “no”. I guess if people begged Google enough, Google just might tell you all the very specifics of the current algo.
Doug Heil Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:19 am
damn. No way to edit a post. In case anyone doesn’t know, the first paragraph in my post was suppose to be in quotes.
Lee McCoy Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:20 am
Now that is what I call a useful tool!
A fantastic addition to any Webmaster’s armoury and it’s certainly made Webmaster tools a destination that every webmaster should visit every day!
Lee
Aaron Pratt Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:26 am
I WANT A DAMN GOOGLE COFFEE CUP.
Aaron Pratt Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:36 am
That’s COFFEE “MUG”.
hehe sorry, having a strange week…
JLH Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:44 am
Matt, you forgot to give yourself credit for providing the open forum for feedback for future features of Webmaster Tools as stated in the opening volley, “You asked, and we listened…”
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/more-webmaster-console-goodness/#comment-88318
I’ve blogged about some features I’d like to see and will add them when you have an open call for more feedback.
Meanwhile, good work webmaster tools team, and I bet things like this are helpful to webspam team as well.
PS Aaron you can have your coffee Mug, I’ve got coffee mugs, I need that Google ipod!
Angel Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:45 am
My Link tab just dissappeared. I checked my links and now the tab is gone.
Sean Carlos Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:59 am
Matt, I’m no longer seeing the Link tab. I did see it when I looked about 16 hours ago; there are other Webmaster tools which don’t appear for all domains, such as “Common Words”; I’ve never seen an explanation as to why… is the same thing happening with the Link tab?
I’d also like to see if a link is tagged with the nofollow attribute.
ALM Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 8:01 am
I have visited Google Webmaster Tools but the links tab does not appear.
I verified my site months ago, and the other tools work but the ‘new link tool is missing’
why is this? surely its nothing to do with a .co.uk domain is it?
Thanks
Screen Rant Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 8:07 am
Where is this new tool? I’ve clicked all over my webmaster control panel and all I can see is the old Index Stats page with the link:screenrant.com link on the page??
Vic
Motorcycle Guy Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 8:09 am
wow, google giveth, and they taketh away. It’s gone now. Wonder if someone found a way to use this data in a way google hadn’t intended?
Jason Cooper Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 8:09 am
Sounds like a great tool, any idea why I don’t have it in my console? I have 3 different sites that I use the webmaster console for (all with different logins) and the links tab does not show up under any of them. I’ve tried logging in and out of each account and I’ve tried using different browsers.
Ethan Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 8:09 am
Hi Matt,
Excited about the new feature, but I’m not seeing the “Links” tab for any of my sites. Looks like someone before me had this problem, too. Maybe it’s down again temporarily?
Thanks for everything you’re doing!
Ethan
David Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 8:13 am
Sean, The links tab is gone because there is a bug where it would show links to any site you wanted, not just your verified sites. See Philipp’s blog for more details. I hope the fix that and reactivate soon
Ryan Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 8:14 am
Sean, they just removed the link tab (most likely) due to an error that allowed you to see all the links of a site that wasn’t yours.
Nobody mentioned it here yet, so I figured I would.
While it’s not really personal information (aren’t links public information?) I can see why Google wouldn’t want this bug to exist.
I expect it’ll be back when they change it to do a server lookup based on your login instead of just having code look at URLs.
Seems like a bug of this sort (changing URL parameters) should have been caught in testing no? That’s one of the first things I do when visiting an application… try changing URL parameters and see what I can find.
Paul Avery Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 8:14 am
I spent about 10 mins looking for this and could not find it! Has it been taken away?
Will it be coming back?
Paul
nonBot Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 8:19 am
I logged into all my accounts this morning, and found no ‘Link’ tab. I did find a non-secure items warning on every click. What’s going on with the new tool?
Tom Churm Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 8:28 am
[ Matt, is it OK if I use this opportunity to make people aware of my site? If not, I apologize and feel free to delete my post... ]
If you like Google’s tool, you may be interested in my Link Leecher search utility:
http://linkleecher.com
It’s a tool to grab all the links from a webpage - which doesn’t necessarily have to be your own. Link Leecher has been online for a year now, and it’s available as a Google Gadget.
Banless Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 8:48 am
I think the tool is great and is very helpful. The only recommendation that I have is if it is possible to put some kind of filter that will allow us to see just the .com links? The reason I ask this is because sometimes you may have 1,000’s of links from one site and it could take awhile before you find other domains. I must have clicked the next button for about 10 mins before I could see a set a links from other sites. I see the same problem with yahoo so I think that feature like this would really set apart from the backlink tools out there.
William Donelson Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 8:56 am
Hmmm… Either there’s something wrong, or I have missed something: I see NO “Links” tab on my webmaster console. My site IS verified.
Would someone give me baby steps to the correct page on the console?
Thanks
William
MaxFax Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 8:58 am
Hi Matt
I see no links tab too
Its been taken down
matt Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 9:04 am
Just confirming that the Links tab has been taken down. I saw it 2 hrs ago, and now it’s gone. I checked multiple domains, thinking perhaps the Links feature was not fully rolled out yet, but it’s gone from all the domains I have access to.
Kirby Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 9:12 am
Yo Dougie!
Fun? Only fun? Is this then your admission that you dont know how to use information for analysis?
While my Google serps have always been very good, I still get far more traffic from links than from search engines. Cross checking this info with log file info, comparing what Google sees to what Yahoo sees, comparing the serps of the link to traffic, etc. There are many ways to determine the value of a link beyond “carrying weight” and this adds to the data set.
Thanks Matt, Vanessa, et al.
Vanessa Fox Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 9:15 am
It’ll be up again shortly! I’ll definitely keep you posted.
Thanks everyone for the feedback. We’ve been hearing lots of great ideas about what you all would like to see regarding this data and we’re furiously taking notes!
martin Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 10:06 am
This link tab is back!
martin
Nutseo Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 10:32 am
OK, this may be a question more for my peers than for Matt.
A. Why did most of us want this feature?
B. Did this feature answer A?
Not complaining here, but I’m just curious… why go through so much trouble when the result is still “nope, not really, not 100%.” I can’t think of many good reasons to look at back links other than to identify link partner/source. If someone can enlighten me, please do.
Kirby, even w/out Google and Yahoo showing you back links, your server log would’ve told you what site are providing you with the most (or the best) traffic. I still don’t see an added value in this feature.
Nick - I think the original Nick here. Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 10:42 am
I checked it out as soon as they put it on their blog.
The tool is cool but it shows nofollow links the same as regular links. it would be really useful if it showed they type of link instead of just the number. So far it’s a pretty nice tool but needs a little work.
amar Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 11:39 am
Thanks a lot for the sitemaps team for providing this feature.
Melanie Phung Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 11:40 am
This is great (even considering all the grains of salt with which we’re instructed to take the news)! More information is always better than less.
Jay Harper Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 11:46 am
The links feature is incredibly welcome… THANKS!
I like the previous comment of letting webmasters flag links as spam…
But one addition that would help would be to be able to organize the links by referring site. If another site puts a link on every one of their pages it can overwhelm the listings of links making it hard to notice the interesting ones…
Christine Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 11:56 am
Wow! Thanks to the Google Team for this absolutely awesome addition. Mine is working perfectly and I am totally amazed at the links I did not even know we had and had not picked up on, on the “other” SE we have been using to check backlinks, so it appears to be far more comprehensive. Thank you to everbody responsible for this.
What I love the most is that this is private info. (I hope it stays that way, please?). And I love that we can flag spammy links as spam. Thank you all.
Cameron Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
This looks great, its been really useful so far. It looks like the pagination doesn’t work entirely, though. Clicking on page 3 of 6 yielded the “No results found” error. Then page 4 was really just page 1 and page 5 was really page 2…you get the idea.
How are these sorted? By relevance? It would be nice to see a way to sort by count. But so far this has been really useful. Great job!
Chrispcritters Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 12:19 pm
Interestingly on my most trafficed and linked site the tool shows no links to the homepage…
Natt Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 12:46 pm
For a feature request I would like to just have a list of the domains that link back, and when you click the domain it expands to show the page. Both yahoo and google show 100s of pages from the same site sometimes which is kind of… not so fun to sort through. I am almost comment number 100, so I don’t even know if this will get read.
Santaswatching Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 12:50 pm
I’ve got to admit a fun AND handy tool.
Not so much for me, about how many links I have (not many), BUT very handy tracing those occasional 404 errors where someone has linked in to your site with a bad URL.
Previously, I had no idea of where the error was coming from, now I have a chance of finding and correcting it.
Cool
teddie Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 12:51 pm
Thumbs up Vanessa, this gets full approval from my team.
SEO Loser Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 1:16 pm
Thank you Google! Scoring some major points!
Scott Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 1:24 pm
I think that by sharing more Google is helping to slow down black hat practices. Of course, there will always be black hat, but it most SEOs and webmasters don’t feel like they have to “figure” Google out there less of a chance that they will be sneaky. Through Google Sitemaps and now this Google has come a long way toward being more open and helping SEOs instead of working against them. My nephew was just born less than two hours ago so I can’t focus any longer. Imagine – He will never know a world without the Web.
Salas Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 2:50 pm
Hmm, since this announcement, my site http://www.cidnetwork.com which has been in google’s index for 10 years has suddenly lost all backlinks and is not even indexed anymore.Is this a glitch or is it that after 10 years I have broken some sort of guideline?
Just yesterday , everything was fine. Cidnetwork was no#1 & #2 for ‘toilet problems’.Now it doesn’t even show for its own name.
David Payne Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 2:53 pm
Feature Request:
The reverse of rel=nofollow for webmasters to disavow any association with a site linking to them. For example, OneCall has a site linking to us that is in the porn industry and we want no association with them. You allow webmasters the option of ref=nofollow allow us also to list sites in our webmaster tools account we wish to not be considered associated with for Google PageRank algorithms.
Feature Request:
Download data in .csv format (similiar to AdWords or Google Analytics). I had to Choose a Program and there may be a subset of people that can’t figure that out.
Feature Request:
Allow a toggle of ‘All Inbound Links’ and ‘All Weighted Inbound Links’. We don’t have to know how many points or crazy things like that but knowing what is being counted and what isn’t would be powerful.
Question:
Matt states that it doesn’t mean the sites are carrying weight. However, OneCall is on every major price comparison engine known to man and none of them show up in our inbound links report. I know that most of them are using technology to block PageRank points so I have a hard time thinking that some types of nofollow are still being used to filter the inbound links results.
Dave (Original) Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 2:59 pm
Seems to have raised more questions than answers, even know Matt twice bolded the all-important bit
Still, there’s no discounting the Placebo effect.
Matt_Not_Cutts Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 3:06 pm
Wow, hate to do a ‘me too’ post, but goodness gracious me, this is the coolest thing I have seen Google do in a long time. I can’t believe all this data was sitting in a vault somewhere and it’s only just seeing the light of day. Splendid work.
Simon Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 3:33 pm
If I don’t see a link, can I assume it carries no weight?
Which is a completely the opposite of what you told us.
Eventually someone will notice that “nofollow” is a useful part of the Internet’s linking structure and use it in search engine rankings.
Why do I get the feeling I’ll now have a comprehensive list of all the bulletin boards, and guest books, in the world that were exploitable 12 months ago from all the pharmaceutical spam sites I took down last May from our trial hosting service. Still who knows, I’m sure Matt probably knows some folk who’d pay for such a list
Morris Rosenthal Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 3:39 pm
Any reason the number of internal links shown is limited to 200? It would be handy to have the full number as a check on sloppy webdesign:-)
The external links are great, it’s relly interesting to see blog clusters and the like.
kokkada.com Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 3:51 pm
This is a great addition to Webmaster Central.Thank you Google! Scoring some major points!
Aaron Pratt Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 4:05 pm
I get this urge to start doing social media spamming when I look at the few links pointing @ my pages.
What does this all mean?
I am serious BTW Vanessa, how is this data of any value to the idea you guys pushed to webmasters (who try to play by the rules) of “earned organic links”?
I believe that just like with PageRank this new feature will make people chase the wrong bird…and maybe to some extent that is a good thing.
Lots of mixed messages coming from Google in the last few days, you guys better get a handle on it before it grows into a monster.
Yuri Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 4:47 pm
How about showing links to supplemental pages? It’d be interesting to know which links do not work or where we need more of them. As a side note, it should be a good idea to see only supp pages of a site via a special supp: command or something (Thanks).
Morris Rosenthal Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 6:25 pm
Oops, I just asked why the internal links count was limited to 200 per page, and then I found a single page which had 201. Still seems to be some sort of filtering going on with the internal links, but I guess it’s not a hard ceiling.
Kicking myself for not following you into Wordpress back before I only did a few posts ithrough Blogger. Now I’ve got over 300, they’ve changed the rules, and it would take a ton of work to move. They are now insisting on saving FTP passwords for third party sites which would stink if they got hacked. Got any Blogger migration products you can suggest:-)
Kirby Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 6:30 pm
“Kirby, even w/out Google and Yahoo showing you back links, your server log would’ve told you what site are providing you with the most (or the best) traffic. I still don’t see an added value in this feature.”
Nutseo, I know that, but I deal with less than adequate log/stats for some consulting clients. Also with this tool I am seeing links that are redirected through scripts ( for ex: http://www.notmydomain.com/subcat/out.php?site=10000000) that I couldn’t ID with logs before. I was surprised to see these links show up. They dont appear with Yahoo’s tool.
Visio Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:13 pm
Hmm interesting addition Matt. I have a question which I posted at my blog. Could Google use ajex(or whatever. It doesn’t need to be ajex) to allow us to minimize or maximize a particular site? For example if I post at a forum and I have 5,000 posts I don’t want to see all those pages my link is on. They aren’t why I post there. So I want to be able to up and down arrows allowing me to max or min a particular site. What do you think?
Regards and get some sleep
SEO Mentor Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:21 pm
I am really happy to see this tool under the web master tools, It’s really a great start and you have helped alot to the webmaster like me to save thier time in getting the link back details by querying from link: to google search box.
It will be great if can show the IPs group wise ( c class) in external links. Then it will great help for the website. And If there is genuine content rating tool in which webmaster tools will shows the website content in the slider (like you have in the crawal rate) then it will be great.
nicole cruz Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 7:46 pm
I am kinda confused, is back link and incoming links the same?
Mike Bogo Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 9:07 pm
Very nice and handy!
It’d be great if change since last week / login / whatever was built in?
Matt Cutts Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 9:58 pm
N Katz, the short answer is that the backlink tool gives you a lot more information to spot stuff like this. Now that you know about it, you could do a DMCA request, for example. In this case, I’d be happy to ask someone about it; my hunch is that we can get that proxy sorted on Google’s side pretty quickly.
Badar Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 10:20 pm
Hi Kia Niskavaara, Why don’t u try Google Analytics instead of referer.org. I know the RSS/notification feature is still not there and I hope Matt & Vanessa are listening to this request.
But I’m sure, no other free service really matches Google Analytics. BTW, I myself use a combo (Google Analytics + Awstats).
Best of luck!
SearcH EngineS WeB Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 10:38 pm
________________________________
This is obviously a reaction to the Yahoo Backlinks tool - Please don’t react to others - implement as soon as a need is demonstrated
Sadly, there are vital flaws with this welcomed, new Google tool
Advanced Google SEOs are just too sophisticated to be satisfied by a common links checking tool - such as the Yahoo or MSN checking tools.
Advanced SEOs need a way to further analyze the results:
This is what would suit SearchEnginesWeb:
☻ PageRank Info for all links…
☻ Filtered results by PageRank and Age of BackLinks
☻ Anchor Text Keywords Analysis
I know you’ll do as I wish
Claudiu Spulber Said,
February 6, 2007 @ 11:43 pm
Well done. This quickly became my 2nd favourite tool from GW (first being the “Query stats”). A quick enhancement (as mentioned by other commenters too) is to be able to sort these results by no. of links (or by date where applicable), so that we wouldn’t have to import this list into excel and play with the sorting.
Harith Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 12:09 am
Matt
It looks like you and Vanessa have started a Backlink Hysteria
I’m really afraid the new Backlinks Tab will encourage webmasters to worship backlinks and PageRank etc… forgetting all about valuable contents, crawlable and user friendly sites.
And if “Sometime in the next year, someone will say; who have started all this?” And then I’ll point them back here to this post
William Donelson Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 12:34 am
Yes, it’s nice for a start. But -
1) Should be able to sort links by date FIRST seen
2) Should be able to sort links by TRAFFIC (assuming use of Google Analytics)
3) Position of link on page would be nice (ATF etc)
4) Type of link, e.g. Text or Picture
5) PageRank of page containing link
Thanks
William
Dave (Original) Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 1:43 am
Matt, I’m a Google fan and always have been, still am
At 1st I thought this tool was a good move. However I can now see this as a bad move and Google doesn’t make many IMO. The reasons being, the flood of questions pertaining to link weighting, PageRank etc being asked. IMO it will encourage link spam and email spam (requesting links) BIG TIME. That not good for Google, Webmaster and least of all searchers.
I don’t believe for a second that the reason the advanced link operator was only returning a sample of links due to server space. I believe it was a conscience choice made by Google and a smart one.
Matt, I’m sure you will pass on the praise but PLEASE also pass on the dissaprovals (Adam, Doug & Myself). PLEASE
visiosearch Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 3:45 am
Hi Matt,
Finally Google give us this information.
Since the use of the Link command was many times useless we needed to visit Yahoo to get more information about links.
Keep up with the good work.
PS: For instance, put again the API Search available or we need again to use de Yahoo API.
Regards
MAC
Sally Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 4:15 am
the link tab has alerted me to a site
which appears to have hundreds of links to my site. eg one of those links is from http://www.petexperts4u.com/Llialn/nutriI
I don’t know whats going on, their pages appear meaningless and just clog up my tidy list of inbound links!
is there anything I can or should do?
Thank you
Dudibob Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 4:54 am
Awesome
am liking the new tool so far
from your line your hammering into us
“Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight.”
Does this mean you can confirm that the links seen currently in a Google link:www.domain.com search, these links do hold weight?
Josh Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 6:20 am
Very nice. It doesn’t do everything I would like, but its a move in the right direction.
I like that it showns inside links as well, I can think of some troubleshooting sessions where this might be handy.
Thanks to the team
Doug Heil Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 6:26 am
Totally agree. The large numbers of posts in this thread telling Google they want more and more and more should tell Google something. It’s uneeded hysteria at the least. It will only serve to get all of us countless more numbers of spam email requesting links, etc. I cannot see the tool as a good thing at all. Sorry. Simply reading all the posts in this thread about PR and link weighting, etc and you know exactly what the tool will do. It’s one thing to be more open with sites, but quite another to further the link frenzy. As if it wasn’t crazy enough out there anyway? How can we “teach” stuff about having a great site that searchers actually want to find if people think that all this amounts to is the number of links you can get?
I have no desire to use the tool personally. Truly have no need for it.
Sorry Vanessa.
Dockarl Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 6:38 am
Hi Matt -
The results seem to be somewhat erratic - for instance, yahoo shows approximately 1000 backlinks to http://www.utheguru.com, which has been up and running for 6 month, whereas another of my sites http://www.thescapeartists.com (about a month old) shows 2 -
WHEREAS..
In Google webmasters tools, utheguru.com shows no inlinks whatsoever, and thescapeartists.com.au shows 1.. what’s the GO there?
JasonM Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 6:54 am
It is good to finally see more of the backlinks Google knows about.
I have also noticed that the Yahoo SiteExplorer is including backlinks even though the nofollow tag was included on the link.
German Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 8:18 am
SEW
☻ PageRank Info for all links…
If page a page rank of the page has nothing to do whether Google recognize and value the link, why bother about it.
☻ Filtered results by PageRank and Age of BackLinks
see over for pagerank. Age of backink: may be interesting to know which links were added in the course of last week, last month.
☻ Anchor Text Keywords Analysis
Probably the most natural links won’t have the anchor you want. I don’t think it is of interest of Google to value the anchor too much. I think it would be much more interessant for Google to value a link through the scope of the linking/page, anchor being important if you don’t already have the word on your page (which a limited power to avoid Google bombing).
Like if a page is talking about things that are likely to be unrelated (like viagra + car insurance + weight loss), the link and the anchor would be disregarded (up to the exception of maybe somebody offering viagra for people looking to loose weight with a good looking car insurer - just the idea of it should be censored here).
Tom Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 8:42 am
I like the tool very much. Would be “cool” if the site’s page having the links PR was displayed along with the link.
Multi-Worded Adam Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 9:06 am
I don’t recall saying anything. Oh yeah, that’s right…because I didn’t.
Sorry…getting over the flu and my head’s still cloudy. So if this is somewhat incoherent or wrong, blame whatever stuff I’m drinking or taking.
Maybe it is the flu talking, but I don’t totally disapprove of the tool as such. The reason I say that isn’t because of what it appears to be but what it really could be.
The tool in and of itself may seem to be of relatively little use in that it encourages silly things like link exchanges, triangular link swaps, co-op schemes, DP schemes, text link schemes, etc. and so on. But what if that’s what this tool was meant to flush out? In other words, the tool itself might be more of a trap than an actual tool.
If that’s the case, I’m all for it. Let people fall into the trap, as some will have to do no matter what they get told, and either they learn or keep falling back into the trap.
If that’s what it’s there for, then I can see a logic. Mind you, that’s about the only scenario where I would see one. And I wouldn’t expect a direct answer on this either. Just something for the link-hounds to think about…you may be sucked in.
I just don’t see any other reason for this tool being built the way that it is, with what appears to be a Persian flaw that is bound to create havoc. Why add to the PR-hysteria unless there’s a greater goal behind it?
3Formed Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 9:35 am
So if not all backlinks are carrying a weight does this mean that only the ones you can see without the backlink tool are of any use?!
Happy to hear of this tools existence anyway - i always liked the yahoo site explorer!! Useful but a little bit over the top….
Googles webmasters tools are way better and i think more intuitive, more people should realise the best way to rank well on google is not using rocket science or tricks but to use the systems designed by Google for that exact purpose….and lets not forget blogger.com
Harith Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 10:07 am
Multi-Worded Adam
“Sorry…getting over the flu and my head’s still cloudy.”
No worry!
Last time Matt had a cold he recovered at once by following of drinking boiling water
btw.. Canadian Adam! long time no post
Harith Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 10:08 am
Multi-Worded Adam
“Sorry…getting over the flu and my head’s still cloudy.”
No worry!
Last time Matt had a cold he recovered at once by following Canadian Adam’s recommendations of drinking boiling water
btw.. Canadian Adam! long time no post
Aaron Pratt Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 10:28 am
Ever log into Google adsense and notice the little timer that tells you the last time it was that you checked your earnings? This silly link tool might also remind SEOs of their link building obsession yes?
Anyone seen the images of Vanessa Fox hanging out with the folks over at SEOmoz? I believe Google has good intentions but this is bad PR for those of us who are not part of this “popular” SEO crowd.
I hate Google and SEO again today, got to look for something that makes more sense and doesn’t make me feel bad. ;-(
Joe Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 11:17 am
Hi Matt,
One of the backlinks that see in the new links tool that I would imagine carries weight is mattcutts.com. I am wondering if these backlinks might negatively affect my Google presence and if so, is it possible to have the URL removed from my prior comments on this blog? The tool is great and my appreciation goes out to the Webmaster Tools folks.
Pim Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 11:36 am
Great service!
In the section Diagnostics in webmaster tools, google lists a number of URL’s that were not found. As a webmaster I would like to find the pages where I accidentily linked to URL’s that do not exist in order to fix these broken links. I tried to look for the URL’s there were not found in the overview of internal links…. but I have the impression that the broken links were filtered away
Here is my suggestion for further approvement: show broken links. It would be a great service for webmasters and it would make the web better crawlable for search engine spiders
Andre Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 12:11 pm
Good question @ Aaron
“This silly link tool might also remind SEOs of their link building obsession yes?”
webmaster update - great! thanks
Tom Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 1:14 pm
MW-Adam, I only suggest adding the PR number because it seems an easy thing to do. I realize it plays no part in SERPS. I do like the tool because it shows me links to internal pages I have I would not have checked for before. I read the content of the forum posts discussing the links to my internal pages and get ideas how to adjust my content further.
Omar Khan Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 1:31 pm
This is very nice and I was delighted to see this happen. My only wish for the future is that we can share our Webmaster Tools account on a restricted basis, like Google Analytics, with others like clients so that they can see their backlinks without seeing the whole list of sites we manage for other clients.
Jeff Lawrence Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 1:51 pm
Very impressive! Good thing you pointed it out Matt, I had been logging in but wasn’t expecting a change and glanced right over the links tab. Thank you again, this is a major step.
Hannes Johnson Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 3:27 pm
Thanks for the heads up Matt!
I’ve been using Yahoo to get more detailed linkback stats… but now I can get it straight from Google
Lew Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 5:50 pm
Matt, I have found a bug in google. I have a screenshot of it, but don’t know how to get it to you. It is coming up to random to just give you a url or I would just give it to you. It also seems to be happening with a number of sites. Thanks in advance.
Ken Barbalace Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 7:23 pm
Which in turn makes us even more suspicious.
Seriously though this is a great new feature. For those wanting to sort in this way or that and wanting to be able to better mine the data, this is why Google provides an option to download the link data via a CSV file. If you don’t like the way Google sorts it, download the CSV and manipulate the data to your heart’s desire using your favorite spreadsheet or database program.
Website developers Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 7:54 pm
That’s an awesome tool. Will really help to know what websites link to you ? But the actual question is are visitors using those websites to find you at all ? or are those websites are been fed to only search engine crawlers?
Dave (Original) Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 8:01 pm
Googlebug?
James Brunskill Said,
February 7, 2007 @ 11:44 pm
My sites are all showing as unverified, and the verification system is apparently unavailable…
Before I lost access to the webmaster tools I noticed some strange behaviour. One of my blogs A Word A While http://awaw.blogspot.com/ didn’t show any links from my other blog http://jambecorp.blogspot.com/ but every page on that blog does (the link is in the side bar). Any explanation? I can check in again after I get my sites re-verified. It appears that the links show up with a link: query…
AWAW does seem to rank rather lowly in google, it ranks below several link pages link “blogflux” listing my own site when searching for “A Word A While”. That doesn’t seem like the best search results to me. I’m not really making money off any of my sites so it is just a matter of personal interest rather than losing money, but it would be nice to figure out why the results are as they are…
Astrid Said,
February 8, 2007 @ 12:23 am
Lew look it.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-provides-backlink-tool-for-site-owners/#comment-96338
This bug has been removed.
Sebastian Said,
February 8, 2007 @ 2:21 am
> My only wish for the future is that we can share our Webmaster Tools account on a restricted basis
Omar Khan, you can do that - just let your clients sign up for their own sites
Ian Said,
February 8, 2007 @ 3:24 am
Uh, does it have some problems if you’ve set the preferred doman tool to be non-www. and all links go to http://www.?
The Google link: command gives me a few backlinks, but this new tool gives me both no internal and no external links.
Shabir Said,
February 8, 2007 @ 7:25 am
I see the difference in results between link:domain and this new feature on Google’s webmaster console. Does this mean here was will see better updated results?
anyway its a useful feature..
Zev Said,
February 8, 2007 @ 10:27 am
This is a huge improvement. I have many links that I could not determine if google knew about. Now I know which ones they are aware of. Regardless of the weight they carry, at least I know which ones they have identified.
Multi-Worded Adam Said,
February 8, 2007 @ 10:37 am
Harith: I hate you for that.
Seriously…that’s what I did (that and the non-concentrate OJ), and I got over in a week what is taking everyone else that got the same thing 3-4 (I actually got it last, and am the only one so far who has killed it).
Tom: my comments were more general than directed at any one specific user/person. I know that you know that I know that you know what you know, but what about the 5,000,000,000 people who don’t know that? That’s basically my angle.
jessie Said,
February 8, 2007 @ 5:11 pm
Nice tool. I have downloaded the table and see more backlinks!
Thank you ^-^
Laura (f-lops-y) Said,
February 8, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
Matt, Dave Taylor (askdavetaylor) told me to ask you what’s up as he cant figure out my Google rankings either, and at my wits end I will…
First, thanks for this feedback on backlinks… Second, see:
> I rank really well on yahoo and msn for most of my key search terms. I have
> cleaned up my site, checked all my backlinks, submitted to quality
> directories, i don’t spam, and I (think) I’m totally legit - and google hates
> me, they always have. I’ve stripped my pages bare, and reordered everything, I
> rank no where for anything, and someone told me I have a huge penalty. No one
> seems to be able to tell me why. Oh please can you help me. I really don’t
> know who else to ask now. www . naturallyguaranteed . com
[Dave's reply] Looks to me like Google knows about 75 pages on your domain, but you’re
right, they definitely don’t rank at all. Looking at it, though, I really
have no idea what’s going on. Perhaps you can drop an email message to Matt
Cutts at Google and ask him if he has any ideas? You can find him through
his weblog at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/
obviousy I couldn’t find you email - and I’m not surprised… please delete this post, and answer me if you possibly have two minutes sometime before July?
Aaron Pratt Said,
February 8, 2007 @ 6:52 pm
I hit 104 degrees and fried my brain this/last week (that is 104 even after taking 4 Ibuprofens), felt like I was dying as my body convulsed on the bed with chills and sweats.
Ever get so sick that you re-evaluate your entire life during that time?
Dave (Original) Said,
February 8, 2007 @ 8:39 pm
RE: “I hit 104 degrees and fried my brain this/last week….”
Drinking boiling water would have reduce that to 100 degrees
Peter Scott Said,
February 9, 2007 @ 12:02 am
Great tool folks and many thanks. Can we attach any weighting, significance or analysis to Google’s listing of our *internal* links?
Dave (Original) Said,
February 9, 2007 @ 1:03 am
I think internal internal links ONLY would be the best. Sadly, as it is, this is only going to add to the link obession most have.
Mike Said,
February 9, 2007 @ 8:13 am
This is great! I can finally see who Google believes is linking to me. It will allow me to gauge where to concentrate my link building efforts, as I can now understand which types of sites Google deems important to my site. One thing I found was that all those del.icio.us bookmarks for my sites are actaully indexed by Google.
JLH Said,
February 9, 2007 @ 9:02 am
Mike, as stated 3 times in the post, “Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight”
Paula Said,
February 9, 2007 @ 4:05 pm
This is brilliant! I really like this tool. As mentioned previously above the addition of a pagerank for each link would be great but hey let’s not be greedy. Great job!
BeGenius Said,
February 9, 2007 @ 6:49 pm
Hi All,
it is just The Begaining of this tools in Google so you can expect more that what you can imagine in the next update.
but really Well Done Google
justin flavin Said,
February 10, 2007 @ 2:42 am
“Matt, Dave Taylor (askdavetaylor) told me to ask you what’s up as he cant figure out my Google rankings either, and at my wits end I will…
First, thanks for this feedback on backlink”
Laura - the reason why Google doesnt like you, is because of your product pages.
Look at this for example:
http://www.naturallyguaranteed.com/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=41
You dont describe whats in the product, its ingredients , or any proof that the product will work. In other words , its very similar to a spam website.
Now you could be 100 per cent legit , but the first thing that popped into my head when looking at your site was “spam”.
Doug Heil Said,
February 10, 2007 @ 3:22 am
Hi Laura (f-lops-y);
You don’t need Matt to tell you what is what. You just need someone who knows something. Viewing your site; .. first site; “nice” site/design. You are doing some things wrong that are very, very basic. You may want to find a real good se discussion forum to ask for a critique or something. To me; some things are extremely obvious and you just haven’t had any real good help as of yet.
Tom Harrison Said,
February 10, 2007 @ 10:46 am
Pass along kudos from a happy user. This is a great, and long overdue feature. Yahoo Site Explorer is so … Yahoo. This is what we need to make sure we know what’s going on on our site.
Doug Heil Said,
February 10, 2007 @ 12:23 pm
Hi Tom;
…………”Pass along kudos from a happy user. This is a great, and long overdue feature. Yahoo Site Explorer is so … Yahoo. This is what we need to make sure we know what’s going on on our site.”
Overdue for who exactly? Please tell all of us exactly how this benefits you. No really, I truly wish to know exactly why you have to know who links to you? Can’t you simply view your logs to see the referrals? What exactly am I missing? I’ve been in this industry going on ten full years now. Guess how many times I’ve felt the need to use “any” type of backlinks tool for my site or my client’s sites? That’s right; I’ve “never” felt the need. That is; I’ve “never” felt the need. That’s right. “Never”.
So again; I see many, many posts in here saying how great this is and how great a benefit it is to know who links to you, but I’ve yet to see a post outlining exactly what benefit this is to the webmaster or site owner.
Isn’t knowing exactly what your visitors do when they find your site what it means to “know what’s going on with it”? How does knowing a link is leading to your site help you to “know what’s going on”?
Ask me how many times I request a link from “any” site to my sites? That’s right; “Never”.
Many, many are thrown BS in this industry. Many, many truly and totally do not “get it”.
Sorry; but I only speak my mind…. and the truth.
justin flavin Said,
February 10, 2007 @ 12:37 pm
same thing here - also 10 years in the industry - and i’ve NEVER requested backlinks from anyone. sure, if somebody is reviewing one of our products and the review goes online, i just make sure that the link is accurate, but thats about it. my main concern has always been the user experience and secondly , can the search engines spider my site effectively. thats about it.
Doug Heil Said,
February 10, 2007 @ 1:04 pm
Very good Jason.
I’m not including the few quality directories that I guess you can say a link is requested by submitting to these “few quality” directories. lol
We should start a new group of protestors. “Down with Backlink tools. Down with Backlink Tools.”
Nothing else seems to work as the huge amount of “link mongers” out there will never go away. The large amount of BS in the industry won’t go away either as many firms make a living off the uninformed and naive by “selling PR’ and selling links and fueling the link frenzy. Take away the frenzy and all these firms would not exist. I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of a firm who makes a living off the naive though. As each day passes, internet users and owners get smarter.
Okinawa Said,
February 10, 2007 @ 3:28 pm
I think that backlinks is the one thing that Google does wrong.
Niko Said,
February 12, 2007 @ 5:42 am
Thank you for the excellent article!
I believe that good backlinks with authoritative and relative themes resources only for the benefit.
Heather Paquinas Said,
February 12, 2007 @ 9:20 am
This is great.
But where’s the “rss feed for newest links” for us link junkies?
Lee Davies Said,
February 12, 2007 @ 11:12 am
I think the backlink tool is a great addition.
Conficio Said,
February 12, 2007 @ 1:03 pm
Hi Matt,
would be great if the tool actually worked. You state it undercounts the number of links. It really does. On my website’