How are backlinks calculated?
 

In reference to Google, how are the backlinks calculated?

What I mean is...

Say I check my domain on urltrends, and it says i have 430 google backlinks. Does that mean 430 backlinks to the index of the domain or 430 backlinks to all pages on my domain?

Also, are they only showing backlinks from sites with a certain level of pagerank?

Thanks!

The Google backlink algorithm is probably guarded just like their search algo, and I have yet to see a decent explanation of how it works. On average G shows about 5% of the backlinks Y does for my sites, and when I take the time to look through the backlinks I find that I've got no BL showing for some good, high PR link trades but some do show from free sites that have me with some small/new LLs. |huh

Would love to hear a good explanation.

Why do I have this uneasy feeling that such an answer would likely cause an irreparable tear in the space/time continuum. |shocking|

That is right in line with my numbers.

Incoming Google Links: 430
Incoming Yahoo Links: 9,340
Incoming MSN Links: 1,175

The google backlinks are page oriented, as is pretty much everything with google except bans and removals. So it's backlinks to the page.

It used to be it only showed backlinks from pages above pr4. Now, it intentionally obscures the backlinks, giving what is usually described as a "random sampling".

Nobody but the google engineers knows how the backlinks are actually chosen for display. So, you might as well assume it's random.

Cool, thanks Bill. Sounds about right to me.

It's a mystery for me as well, since I don't see them all, and some good are not shown ...

I asked my Guru this question - his response (from a $100K-£65K job in SEO) was in short 'Fuck Knows'. His opinion is that Google are still playing with it and until they stop tinkering for a while nobody can figure it out. Google has such a large amount of data that any general update they do takes *weeks* to trickle through all the sites on their servers and when they are 'tinkering' frequently they can re-update a part of the data before the original update has finished running on all their machines. A week or so ago I had two sites links dissapear entirely for 48 hours, re-appear cut in half and then change again to maybe 75% of their former strength. Thank God for MSN and Yahoo.

Google may be popular with surfers but it is fast becoming unpopular with site owners. I personally am seriously considering forgetting about google entirely and not even submitting. It seems to take up more and more of my time every week.

I never bother with submitting pages to Google. I just add a backlink or three to relevant pages that I know are getting indexed and let GoogleBot find the new page on it's own.

Yeah, there should be no need to submit doodoo to any of the SEs, particularly if you have a hub which is spidered regularly.

I wasnt refering to submitting - it only takes 10 seconds to enter the url and a keydcode... I was referring to all the SEO shit. Because Google keeps changing the rules the SEO tactics keep changing so you end up rewriting content and page headers and reformatting link text and adding or removing alt tage headings and any other sortof god awful crap you can think of and then some arsehole comes along with a (cloaked!)page or ten that says:

kescort; ak escort, uc escort, ug escort, uk eescort, uk eskort, uk escord, ku escort, u kescort, uke scort, uk secort, uk ecsort, uk esocrt, uk escrot, ..... etc etc for pages

and bumps you down the listing!

Just happened to me this morning. Rant over and you can all go back to work now.|banghead|

Backlinks were intentionally masked in March of 2004 by Google at the suggestion of an SEO at a pubcon conference as at that time the backlinks were being used as a purchasing decision maker for link-buyers. It was during the time that DMOZ expireds were the "big thing" as links to get a good instant boost to sites.

As far as the algo and changes - if there have been any changes to the Google algo over the last 3 years they have been very minor and almost un-noticible. The thing that has changed is the filters that are placed on top of the algo. These are adjusted on a daily basis (espcially with the new index that Google is occasionally displaying - and will be for the next two months while they play) and can have a "fun" effect on how your sites will rank.

Forgetting about Google's traffic would be in my opinion ridiculous - but then paying for SEO is about the most "out-there" concept I have ever heard of as well