[WhyNot]

I read a short blurb in Entrepreneur Magazine, p. 56, about obtaining link information/resources for your business. Many of you probably already know about this, but to me it was new. If you go to a search engine and type "link" and a competitor's URL the search engine is supposed to display the web pages that link to your competitor. They said you can also try adding a space between the colon and the first w...link: www.example.com.........

 

[Twinge]

Generally without the space I believe, but I don't know if it matters (e.g. link:www.example.com).

This can be good to check on different search engines as well -- Google does NOT display all the incoming links; I remember reading that it only displays in-links with pagerank 4 or higher (but I'm not certain if this is true).

When I was looking at my own site this way, Yahoo showed the most incoming links by far; MSN showed several, and Google showed almost none. I have a lot of insignificant links back to my site that will show up on Yahoo - for example, in regular access to various sites on the net, I've commented on several random blogs I've found interesting over time, and these comments will usually link back to me (most blogs let you set a link for your name). Google doesn't really care about these sorts of links I guess =)

 

[T-BOT]

They said you can also try adding a space between the colon and the first w...link: www.competitor.com.........

yep. by doing a find web pages from this site function in google (aka site:url) with the "space", all your site pages come up where your site domain-name is mentioned. (from google indexed pages of course).

 

[WhyNot]

It was new to me, they said you can do it without the space before the w or not, guess some may pick t up and other site engines not the focus was in checking out who your competitors are linked to as a potential resource to contact for mutal links, etc.

 

[T-BOT]

It was new to me, they said you can do it without the space before the w or not, --------

focus was in checking out who your competitors are linked to as a potential resource to contact for mutal links, etc.

are you asking about backlinks ?

to look at what sites link to your site you can use a Black Link Check Tool.

Mind you I've never used it to check out competitor sites...... makes my Eyes hurt . bwahahahaha

 

[WhyNot]

are you asking about backlinks ?


Perhaps that is another name for the same thing?! Being new to this I found it cool to be able to check out the link partners of competitors, may give another list/resource that I haven't independently thought of to try to link up to/reciprocal links down the road as our sites evolve.

 

[T-BOT]

are you asking about backlinks ?


Perhaps that is another name for the same thing?! Being new to this I found it cool to be able to check out the link partners of competitors, may give another list/resource that I haven't independently thought of to try to link up to/reciprocal links down the road as our sites evolve.

if thats the case, natural links are best.
Forced ones like the good old WHATEVER-LINKS on a " links page " are not as important as they once were. They are sorta like mish-mash mini-directories that provide un-related resources sending users/SE way Off track into who knows where.

Google fixed that pretty good I must say.

 

[Twinge]

Oh interesting, it does indeed give broader results if you have a space. (Still a far cry from 'all' of them, though

And yes, we are takling about back-links, call them what you want.

T-bot does make a good point (that I would've brought up if she didn't) as well - getting involved in big link farms will not really help your rankings much. The best way to look at these things is to ask questions like "If there were no search engines, would I still be doing this? Does it help my customers in any way?".

 

[Rodney]

The best way to look at these things is to ask questions like "If there were no search engines, would I still be doing this? Does it help my customers in any way?".

That's a great way to put it!