Joshua's Thoughts

so i was doing some seo today and i noticed that in google webmaster tools, the “backlink” report was reporting thousands more links than what google was reporting in a link: search.

so, i went and i posted a question in the webmaster tools forum here. ultimately, the answer i was given was that yes – there are two different reports and neither are accurate.

it turns out that link: is a “random sampling” of the number of backlinks you have while webmaster tools shows all backlinks, including links with rel=”nofollow”. my response was that i think this is pure silliness on google’s part. it makes it very difficult for people to gauge how well their organic efforts are paying off.

my exact response:

“Well, this is just silly. There are two reports, neither are accurate. Without being able to at least extract out which links are valid (meet PageRank and do not have rel=”nofollow”), there’s no real way to gauge how many backlinks we have and/or how our competitors are performing and/or how well our organic seo efforts are paying off. Seems odd to me that the response from Google (in the FAQ) would be: “This is normal and you don’t need to worry about it.”

matt cutts gives his explanation of what is going on here:

so there you have it. link: is not the best tool for determining how many and/or what quality backlinks you or your competitors have.

anyone else excited to see what google has cooked up? i sure am. i can’t wait for the scoop.

**update**

well darn, it looks like photos of android were leaked. here’s the site where they will announce the launch. it’ll be at 10:30 EST. that’s three hours from now. yay.