Two questions about the link: operator

On February 26, 2009, Google software engineer Matt Cutts collected questions on Google Moderator and answered many of them on video.

Sven Heß from Wiesbaden, Germany asked:

How accurate is Google's backlink-check (link:...)? Are all nofollow backlinks filtered out or why does Yahoo/MSN show quite more backlink results?

San Diego Tim from San Diego asked:

If you have inbound links from reputable sites but those sites do not show up in a link:webname.com search, does this mean you are not getting any 'credit' in Google's eyes for having inbound links?

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• google
• link
• operator
• backlinks

[agapitoflores001]

Great functions. It would be very useful for advertising on the web. It cleared my mind from different questions regarding back links.

[hydrawebdevdesign]

Good to know, thx!

[expertreviewsdotcom]

I don't know about this video. Do you habe any others that can back it up?

[TheTunerClub]

yahoo/msn... you said google/msn...

god video tho

[salaser19]

Good answer Matt!, several questions were answered for me

[awoodward77]

If i have many backlinks to my site but im only getting a couple to show up on my google webmasters links to my site page. Does this mean they haven't found them yet? How can I help google find them faster?

[samdenstevens]

Found my answer... "Pages with external links", click number of links at right.

[samdenstevens]

This might sound dumb, but where in GWT can you check the "full dump" of inbound links? Under Index Stats I see the link: query but it returns the same results as compared to doing the search when not logged into GWT. Am I not looking in the right place?

Meanwhile, a search query I've always liked for checking backlinks is:

"mysite[DOT]com" -site:mysite[DOT]com

(replace [DOT] obviously)

But I imagine this doesn't tell me which ones Google is actually crediting to my site.

[nascent26]

How about relevancy? Would it be great if we can see more relevant links at the top of the link: operator search results? Or if possible in the GWT backlink search?

[manfmnantucket]

also regarding question #2 - what if the good links known to you do not show up in GWT? Is there a way to tell GWT about links you're stoked and proud of?