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?
source
Hi Matt, based on your explanation above, i could not quite understand what it would signify if link:mydomain shows absolutely no results. When i Google for link:mydomain, for my website, i get no results at all whereas my webmasters show all of the back-links. Why is that so?
It will all boil down to the logic of balance. Of course, no one, needless to say, would want to be downright "cheated" by other SEO specialists, so it is wise enough that google would filter search items randomly especially when we're talking about back links.
Good answer Matt!, several questions were answered for me
Found my answer… "Pages with external links", click number of links at right.
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.
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?
The way random links are reported via the public link: command does make sense, as explained. However the real issue is links reported privately in GWT – webmasters assume those are considered legit and try for more of same.
Why? Feedback is nominally assumed to be positive. Obviously, if goog wanted to discourage certain links, they could best do that by not recognizing them in GWT.
Hey Matt, do you counts nofollowed links or not? According you, yes. Check at 2:34 minute.