Why Don't all Backlinks show up in a link: Search on Google?

Here's a nagging little issue that's been bugging me for ages, and recently came to a head when a client asked me why they had so few backlinks showing up when they use the link colon command?



If you're not familiar with it, the link colon command can be used to give you a list of sites that links to a specific page in any website. It looks like this: link:http://www.bbc.co.uk and the url of the site can be changed to whatever you want it to be. You type the whole command in the search box on Google, not in the address bar of your browser.

So anyway, back to the problem with this useful but frustrating little trick - the number of backlinks site colon displays is never the same as the amount you can find when you verify and implement Google Webmaster. I've tended to just accept the discrepancy without ever really questioning it, but thought it was about time to find out why.

The best answer I've found is in this video interview with Matt Cutts of Google, which is pretty self explanatory. If you don't have time to watch it, Google purposely don't show all backlinks in the results from a link colon command, to ease pressure on their servers and protect site owners. Therefore these results are designed to give a 'flavour' of the backlinks point to the site in question.

So if you want the full picture on backlinks to your site, use Google Webmaster (a drastically under-used resource in my humble opinion).

If you use link colon, then use it to compare link numbers between different sites, on a like for like basis.

And if you really want to identify backlinks to your competitors, then try using one of the third party link analysis tools available.