The link command is not a very helpful command at all in Google anymore. It's useless, as it doesn't actually show you the sites that are linking to yours. All it appears to do is show a small, representative sample of links. Many people say that Google only shows links that have a PageRank of 4 or above with this command, but that's not an accurate statement. They don't show every PR4-and-higher site that links to yours, and they do often show sites that are below PR4.
As far as I'm concerned you learn nothing about your site and its links by using that command. I really think it's just one more way that Google attempts to mess with Webmasters' heads. Don't let them get to you! I recommend that you forget it ever existed (as well as the Google toolbar "backward links" check, which is the same thing).
Instead, I suggest you use the following command in the Google search box to get a more accurate accounting of the sites that link to yours:
www.yoursite.com -site:www.yoursite.com
(Obviously substituting yoursite.com for your actual site.)
This command will show you all the pages linking to yours, minus the pages from your own site. If you want to see your own site links too, just remove the -site:www.yoursite.com part, as that's the syntax for excluding them.
posted by Jen @ 5:03 AM
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