1. Google only shows a sample – they show some of your links.
2. Yahoo is incredibly slow to update the links they show (it sometimes takes over 6 months), and doesn’t always show weaker links.
3. MSN, wait I’m pretty sure MSN doesn’t exist anymore. Ok it does but it’s mostly useless.
Looking up your links is a great way to make yourself crazy. You can’t find them. Do yourself a favor and free yourself from thinking you’re not getting anywhere by NOT looking for them.
If you would like to learn a technique that you may not know a lot about, you can check out this lesson on cashcrate tips. I will add additional lessons here as I find them.
Tags: finding links, links
Hi Court,
I must admit…I’m guilty of this.
This post, even if it’s short, gave me a solid roundhouse kick in the butt.
Advice taken.
Thanks Court.
Shōryū-ken! Actually Tatsumaki-Senpū kyaku!
I’m thinking this post had a lot to do with my post in the forum. I appreciate you tackling this issue with a short and straight to the point response. You’ve made your point very clear
I don’t know what you’re talking about Matt I come up with all my post ideas on my own…
No that was actually a great question and raises an issue that a lot of people struggle with. They want to SEE their efforts – they want evidence. It’s human nature and you’re definitely not alone.
We have to train ourselves to believe that it will work and the easiest way to do that is to see it work a few times. The first time obviously is the hardest because we have to operate on faith – sometimes faith in what another person says. Not easy to do.
Court,
lol!…so you’ve got Ryu’s and Ken’s killer moves.
I’d better be heeding all your advices this day forward.
Have a good day Court. Thanks again.
I can do them both for real…
LOL
You caught me red handed.
I was just checking my links and thinking where the hell are they?
Brilliant timing.
Thank You.
Gotcha!
I use a tool to check for my links against certain keywords. why shouldn’t I be doing this? How in the world will I know if my page is optimized enough to reach page 1 if I don’t???
The tool takes a little time to run, but it’s a great time for a smoke break.
I’ve been a subscriber of yours for some time now, and I’ll admit, this post utterly confuses me.
I bet you the tool uses Yahoo to find those links. What I’m saying here Wayne is that I know what links I have created. When I check them against a tool I don’t see as many. That doesn’t mean the others don’t exist and it certainly doesn’t mean that they aren’t being counted by Google.
The industry mindset right now is that we have to see links in Yahoo to know that they’re being counted in Google. Tell me how this is a good plan.
Hmm…perhaps we’re speaking French and Icelandic…
I use a custom tool that will scan Google search results based on a set of keywords I supply to it for any instance of my domain name of choice and report back the position.
So, for the keywords “Blogger Help”, it tells me that I rank in 6th position for those keywords (it seems to fluctuate a little as I’ve seen it at #2 but also at #16).
I usually run it once a week against 4 of my sites to see if there are any pages that I need to tweak to get a higher position.
If that’s not what you’re referring to, then I’d retort with the use of Google Alerts and be done with it. Once I launch a site, I’ll set up a Google alert which will tell me when pages are indexed. I don’t hover over the monitor waiting for alerts tho, lol. It just happens. While I’m waiting, I put another site out. So by the time I’m completing my second or third site, the first one is starting to show signs of being indexed.
I only monitor Google and really care less about Yahoo or any others. Perhaps I shouldn’t, but there is only so much time in the day.
I suspect, now that I’ve thought about it, that you are referring to typing in some keywords then going from page to page looking for yourself in the results.
Yeah, that’s a complete waste of time for sure. lol
“The industry mindset right now is that we have you see links in Yahoo to know that they’re being counted in Google. Tell me how this is a good plan.” – Seems like the industry mindset is rubbish, lol. That just doesn’t smell right at all.
Oh Wayne I understand what you’re asking!! You’re asking why we shouldn’t check rankings – you definitely should check your rankings.
What we’re talking about is here building links to your site, and then trying to find them by doing a search in Yahoo and Google. If you go to Yahoo and search for linkdomain:yoursite.com, it will show you some of the sites that are linking to you. That’s what is a waste of time. Sorry for the confusion.
Ahhhh, it makes perfect sense now. The confusion was my own though, no worries at all. I’m totally thinking keyword ranking. pfft, all that for this. Great huh. sorry.
To the topic though, it certainly doesn’t sound like a good use of time at all. I mean, if you set an alert for ‘YourDomainName.com’ in Google alerts, and get an email when Google indexes a page and finds your domain. It can make your day when you see multiple alerts in a day. But ya don’t go after them. That’s just silly.
My apologies for derailing the topic like that.
What do you think of this service?
http://www.backtype.com/
I’m not familiar with it!
I don’t know if I would go as far as to say MSN is useless. ON an affiliate side of things, there traffic converts very high and does for many affiliate’s.
Thanks Court,
You’ve just improved my mental health!
Now if I can just fix my own mental health I’ll be good to go!
I’m just not sure what I’ll be doing with all of the time this frees up. hahah
Seriously, sometimes I just can’t resist looking up my links (for example when a site of mine is bouncing all over the place in the rankings). You are right though, I will force myself to stop.
I like to keep track of the ones I’ve built in a spreadsheet. That way I can remember where they are and I don’t have to go looking for them.
I’ve noticed a large discrepancy when checking backlinks, between Google and Yahoo for instance, so I don’t even bother, like you said you know how many you’ve put up! I think Wayne may be talking about a sites position in the serps? Maybe using Serps Finder or something like that? Anyway I read that Goog really doesn’t like those kind of programs as they feel they waste resources. I appreciate you Court, I always learn something from you:o)
You’re right! That’s exactly what he was talking about. Google definitely doesn’t like these programs.
oh! Never knew! lol
Hmm…I’ll have to reconsider my use of them then. Thanks for pointing that out! Sheesh! Just when you think you’ve figured something out, it turns out it’s a no-no. fml lol
I never care much about the why, just the how. So I seldom look at any of that crap, I trust you to know what you’re talking about. But hell, I’m a gongfu guy, none of that silly karawte crap.
Nice Buddy!
Court,
You are so right about this! There was a time I would scream at outsourcers who were doing backlinking tasks for me. However, I realized the Yahoo site linking system was slow or inaccurate after I started creating backlinks myself, and would never see the link in yahoo.
Bpaul
Yeah you really can’t find them.
You can honestly make yourself crazy trying!
I’m guilty of wasting time on analytics, but I love SEO and enjoy being knee deep in data. Its not as valuable for people who just want to make money, since many waste so much time with analytics they’re not building links.
Most link tracking I do is just throwing my competition into SEO Elite and going to eat, shower, or watch a movie. When I’m done I briefly look to see “are they anchoring?”.
I’ve tired SEOMoz’s Linkscape, but its even less accurate than SEO Elite.
I think most people can benefit from looking at data at larger time periods. Check rankings and links month to month, not week to week, and definitely not day to day.
I think everyone does that Justin and the honest truth is that some people can handle it and some can’t. Some get depressed when they can’t find the links they’ve created.
Either way it’s definitely not a bad idea to check the links of your competition. It’s always a good thing to know what you’re up against.
Thanks Court–now can you please write another post, “3 Reasons You Shouldn’t Look Up Your Adsense Income.” Wow–imagine how much work we’ll get done then!
I’m on it!
Hi Court,
So basically you’re saying we shouldn’t measure our link building efforts by counting them, but by directly measuring the changes in rankings?
That’s right Ditto!
Court, if you don’t look at what incoming links you get then how can you ever try to strengthen those links? Wouldn’t if be beneficial if you could get some of this incoming links to take a step up the PR latter?
I know you can do that with the links you “create” yourself but I could see benefits of helping other sites linking to you increase their PR as well (with your help)…
Mikael
Ok let me clarify Mikael. You shouldn’t be looking up the links that you create yourself.
Okay then it makes sense. Are people actually doing that?
TONS of people do that. They submit an article to an article directory, and then two days later they’re trying to find it in Google and Yahoo. They don’t find it, so they link it didn’t work. They trade links, then try to find it in Yahoo. They can’t, so they think it didn’t work. It’s a good way to make your head explode.
Court/Mark,
I don’t look up the links but I do tend to focus on the PR stuff, how often do they get up-dated? and how much traffic does the google local results take away?
Without even trying, I found this: http://www.backlinkwatch.com – lol
i guess i like to drive myself crazy. lol. i do go into google and yahoo on a pretty regular basis to check the links. but that’s only been the past six months or so since i’ve been more actively working on buidling links.
i will say that my impression is that yahoo is doing a better job than before of finding and displaying links (though they do only show 1000 backlinks at most) than they were apparently doing in years past. maybe i am wrong. the thing they seem to be slowest about is lsiting new directory submissions unless it’s a well establish directory, then they tend to be faster about indexing it.
i don’t do a lot of seo or work with all these tools, so i’m not an seo expert, just a grunt posting my personal observations.
and again, i always learn something interesting and/or useful here, so thanks again Court