Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, Wilson Internet, Rocklin, CA
Apr 5, 2006, 17:28
"I run a link check for my website through www.linkpopularity.com every week to determine the number of backlinks to my site seen by the major search engines. The figures vary amongst the different engines. Why? At the moment, MSN shows more than 500 links, Yahoo under 200 links, and Google only 25 links. I'd really like to increase the link number in Google as I know this will help with my PageRank. Why is this number is so low in comparison to the other engines?" -- Tim Wright, BulgarianPropertyBuyer.co.uk
For years, the number of backlinks Google displays has been substantially lower than the other search engines. It's not that Google is stupid or can't see other important links to a site. But like a good poker player, it just doesn't show all the cards in its hand.
I've heard that Google only displays links with a PageRank of 4 and higher, but according to my most recent analysis below, that doesn't seem true. Why doesn't Google show more links? People say that it tends to discount on-site links and show only "quality" of links to your site, but I'm not convinced. You won't like my final answer: We just don't know -- and Google ain't talkin'.
I was amazed to discover how much difference there is between the backlinks shown by the major search engines. In an analysis done using Bruce Clay's Link Analysis tool and LinkMaps, I discovered that of external links to a Bible study site, Yahoo (which showed the highest number of backlinks) at best showed only 70% of the total number of backlinks detected by Yahoo, MSN, and Google. There is obviously a major discrepancy concerning which webpages the search engines seem to be indexing.
PageRank* of linking pages
Yahoo!
MSN
Google
Total Non-overlapping back links
PR6
3
0
0
3
PR5
6
3
4
10
PR4
16
7
6
21
PR3
30
18
18
47
PR2
45
28
23
70
PR1
16
11
8
27
PR0
182
54
21
254
Totals
298
121
80
432
*Google's PageRank is not always consistent either, so take it with a grain of salt, rather than as gospel truth.
Don't worry too much about Google's low linking number, since it's obviously judging the relevance of your site on more incoming links than what it shows for a link query. Just keep on with your linking campaign, steadily building the number of solid, contextually-relevant links to your site. You'll find 12 workable linking strategies in my revised book on SEO (www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/seo.htm).
