Yahoo Site Explorer vs. Google link:

Hi gurus!

Does anyone know the difference between the way Google counts its in bound links with the link: command and Yahoo's Site Explorer tool? There are VAST differences between the two, I just wondered if anyone knew why?

You may also find if you follow the links in Yahoo! you cannot actually see any inbound links on the page. This, in my experience, seems to be because Yahoo! sometimes follows PPC links on the content network.

Use both tools since the links Google shows is an indication of what it wants you to see, whereas Yahoo! gives a much broader idea of your backlinks. In reality the actual figure is probably somewhere in between. Look at the ones which appear in Google and try to develop similar links.

For instance I have never seen Google show a backlink for us from any form of site which can be edited by a human (E.G a WiKi or a forum) however both of these types of links give us traffic and appear in a Yahoo! link: search.

Thanks everyone!

On 14:46:47 30 January 2007 StevePratley wrote:

 

It's worth looking at the links in MSN also. Their numbers and Yahoo's are much more consistent, and clearly show more than Google is letting on about.

Don't forget to discount the links within the site as opposed to links from external domains, whilst they count a tiny bit you can pretty much remove them from the equation.