It's common knowledge in the webmaster world that Google is not (and has not for quite some time) accurately reporting how many "backlinks" or how many sites are linking back to your site. There are probably many reasons for that, but that rant can be saved for another article.

So how can a website owner effectively find out who is linking back to them if Google is being "tight lipped"?

Use Yahoo.

Yahoo has been proven to show a more reliable report on who is linking to your site.

Here is what you need to do on your next visit to Yahoo:

Type this into the search box: link:http://www.mysite.com (make sure you replace "mysite" with your actual domain name)

This search command will show you ALL the pages that are linking to your site, including your own pages. If you do not want your own links being reported in your search, then type this instead: link:http://www.mysite.com -site:www.mysite.com

This will tell Yahoo to search for ALL links pointing back to your website MINUS your own links.

If you are curious to see how many links are pointing to a specific page, then type in this: link:http://www.mysite.com/pagename.html (make sure you replace "pagename" with your actual page name).

Just like in the previous example, you can filter out or omit your own links from the search by add the -site:www.mysite.com command to the end of your search string.

Another search you can do is a search for all links pointing to each and every page on your entire domain by typing this: linkdomain:www.mysite.com This is a quick way to get a broad overview of your backlink structure.

Not too difficult, eh? Hope that helps. Good Luck!

When not on his soapbox, Andrew Wroblewski is doing battle with the thousands of spyware programs that can affect you via his anti-spyware website: Spyware Removal where you can get a FREE spyware scan of your computer system.

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