Google Now Reports Links to your Site

February 5, 2007 |

Feel like I’ve been neglecting my blog? I do though my feelings are torn as I’ve been traveling (and will be again), making posts difficult; I hate leaving my blog unsupported but those Mai Tais sure alleviate the concerns!

I’m back for a while with so many topics and ideas broiling in my head that I have a headache. I’m going to start easy with a brief update from Google while I put my other ideas to paper.

I hope you caught the news that Google, today, rolled out changes that allow you to view links to your site. Historically, these backlinks have been limited to only a sample of sites with the thought being that Google was afraid of showing you too much; arguably, knowing the quantity and quality of links could help you decipher their natural search rank algorithm.

Rest assured, they haven’t completely changed their tune and there is a catch, this data is only available through Google Webmaster Central thereby limiting the data to website owners. General users can still find the backlink sample with the traditional lookup command:

link: seobrien.com

Google Webmaster Tools provide information about your sites, sitemaps, and latest updates. Only site owners can access this information which Google confirms by asking that you post a file to your server to verify your ownership.
Within the Tools the data is easily accessible with a new “Links” tab which shows that I have 1038 links to seobrien.com vs. the 534 that appear with the lookup command.

Popularity: 16% [?]

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Tags: google, backlinks