Isn’t Google great? There is a whole industry of hacks like me built up around trying to “beat” Google and get better search engine rankings. It’s clever how if you want to do anything to improve the way Google considers the mountain of data it holds, or the way it receives that data then there are APIs for everything from maps to search algorithms to visualization techniques and so on. But if you want to find a way to cheat the system, take a short-cut to higher rankings, then Google significantly vague. Better still through you will find a mountain of debate, myth and general confession across the so called experts about whatever the subject may be.

In this regard I am talking today about the Google link: operator. I am regularly asked why if you type link:www.domain.com into Google you get a different list and numbers of links than if you look at the same domain in Google Webmaster; and moreover is there any value in the list of links provided by the link :operator, after all it seems to list a bunch of crap pages with ranks even of zero.

In my opinion the facts are:

• In the old days (pre 2002) the link: operator displayed all the links to a site – but this was changed for two reasons: firstly, it provided an opportunity to cheat the system, you could in effect identify a competing site’s links and set out to poach them; secondly, the shear weight of the data Google is holding and the ongoing processing power required to continually answer such queries became a burden for Google.

• The second point above is case in point by the fact that Google does not publicly update it’s page rank tool nor the numbers of links shown in the Webmaster section regularly. Some say it is as infrequently as three monthly - but I see my link numbers growing month on month in Webmaster tools – so it seems just fair to say frequently but not in real time.

• Which means that the number of links and in fact the physical links themselves in your Webmaster tools are unlikely to ever be exactly accurate.

• If you want to “spy” on a competitors links then it appears Yahoo is the best most transparent source. You can be rest assured if Yahoo, MSN or anyone else knows about that links, so does Google. The important point in fact is how much weight Google gives to those links. Recall, Google looks at the content of the page generating the links, the text that makes up the link (the anchor text), the considered importance of the link generating page (it’s Page Rank) and the content of the page receiving the link. Quite simply if your page is about Queensland and the linking page is about Queensland and anchor text says something like “more information about travel in Queensland” then that link is going to be of more value than same reciprocal link buried in a links page linking to your generic home page. Matt Cutts on his blog even makes it more clear than this - he says “do not assume just because you see a back link that it’s carrying any weight”.
  

So is there any value in the list of links generated by the link: operator. After all Google includes it as a tool from Webmasters. Firstly, the list is not as random as some would suggest – evidenced by the fact you get the same result over and over, and because of the point that Google doesn’t want to be bombarded by erroneous queries when its primary purpose is better quality search results matched to pertinent advertising. Unfortunately, I can’t see the value of the link: operator. The list is clearly a subset of all the links to a site but there does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to the list; they don’t seem to be the most recent links, not the highest value links or any other obvious reason, and they certainly are not going to be of any use in a competitor analysis.

So in summary the answer to the continual question is why does the results on the link: operator vary so radically from the links shown in Google Webmasters is to avoid link poaching and to reduce the effort on the Google database.  Secondly, the links shown in Webmasters more accurately reflects the number of links to your site - but in no way indicates the value of those links.  Finally, use Yahoo! or MSN to get an indication of your competitors links.

I sound like a broken record as I harp on about the importance of links, but I just want to clarify some very important issues with links that have been effecting so many of your web rankings in the past few months. Many sites have seen a decline in their search engine rankings - yet they have lots and lots of links, why?

As I said in a post last month about the Importance of Links Google has long disapproved of reciprocal links and now they have pounced “bad neighbourhood” links and buying links.

A bad neighbourhood is formed when you have lots of links from sites that have nothing to do with your sites content. Links from fashion websites, car sales, even shoe websites pointing to your hotel or travel site. Google simply sees right through this and simply not counting these links. It has not been established as yet whether your site is also being penalised for actually having these links. Likewise, listing you site on link farms (sites that serve no other purpose than creating links), or the most recent fad of three-way link schemes are definitely heavy frowned upon - they are simply cheating!

Worse, for hostels that have got themselves listed in such sites, I foresee it is going to be one hell of a battle to get yourselves removed.
Also in a post last month I introduced you to a cool tool for looking to the anchor text links of your competitors for your selected keywords. The anchor and title texts in the links to your website are very important. As part of the clampdown on rogue linking Google is placing much greater emphasis on the relationship between the content on your site and the content on the sites linking to you. One of the main methods for doing this is by looking at the title and anchor text in the links. The back link tool I gave you earlier this week is the first place to start in analysing your links and those of your competitors to establish the value of these.

Since Google has introduced these changes many established sites have seen themselves fall down the ratings. On the flip side the opportunity exists for you to improve your rankings now.

Competitor analysis for any chosen set of keywords is important for a number of reasons, firstly, to know who you are up are up against and secondly to know whether it targetting those keywords really is achievable. In doing this keyword analysis firstly look at the search engine results for your chosen keyword phrase and see how many competitors there are with page rank higher than 4 (this is at least what I would expect you to need to beat for a good quality keyword). Secondly look at the number of inbound links those competitors have - these are the number of links you are going to need. And thirdly, find out the quality of those links - how many of them have your keywords in the link anchor text. (See my post last month on the Importance of Links for more information)

A short cut for the last step is to type the following into Google: intitle:”keyword” inanchor:”keyword” OR you could use this cool tool I discovered - www.startlaunch.com/research/. It allows you to analyse multiple keywords at once quickly and efficiently.

Nice!

Following my rant yesterday a number of emails have come in asking for better explanation of why links are so important and why Google et al. places so much weight on them. The explanation is in fact easy.

When Sir Tim Berners Lee designed the Internet it was meant as a method of sharing scientific documents for review and contribution. Each document was in effect a web page. The first Internet browsers then grew out of this as a means of publishing documents (known as web pages), but without the ability to contribute to this documents (see me article on What is Web 2.0 for an explanation of why). The Google algorithm amongst others is rooted in this premise of documents; when any article is published say in a scientific journal it is published for consideration by others experienced in the appropriate area. Other articles are subsequently published with references back to the original article. The more references in subsequent articles the more we consider the original article to be of importance - to be an authority on the particular subject.

Search engines apply this basic principal - the more links that a particular page has from other web pages the more important that page must be. Search engine algorithms obviously have to take into account an enormous amount of factors that we as humans either consciously or sub-consciously take in when we read an offline article and consider its’ references to other articles: is the other article relevant to the information we seek and should we read that article, being probably the most considered. Search engine algorithms therefore have to be able to consider the content of the web page that is making the link to original page and therefore give weight to the relevancy of that content and reference. This is the basis of the page rank notation.

It is no surprise that we are all trying to “beat” the search engines - achieve higher search results through creating a perception that our web pages are of more relevance than others on a particular topic - so it is also no surprise that the search engine algorithms are having to continually develop at such a fast pace to keep up with the ongoing manipulation battle. Take for example the process of reciprocal links - if links are the most important in a web pages ranking, then I will swap you a link from my page for one from yours. Not what Google had in mind- solution, deprecate reciprocal links. How about I buy a link then? Again not the idea - links are supposed to be based on your content quality - solution, Google now has the ability to report sites that are buying links in the webmaster toolbox.

There are some clear rules on how to get good quality links. Firstly, create good quality content that other sites want to link to. Secondly, seek links which have your keyword phrases in the anchor text, that is, links that explain with relevancy the nature of your content. Thirdly, get links that link exactly to the page that has the content that is relevant to the page that the incoming links are from. Finally, in the same way that a reference to your offline article from a well know professor on your subject is worth more than lots of references by his students, so too is one good link from a reputable site of relevance to your website subject than lots of links from completely irrelevant link farms.