[Code Monkey]

Have you ever used the link command in Google search to find out how many backlinks you have to your site? Have you found it frustrating that google won't show you all of them? Of course you have, we all have. Well, Google does listen and they have given the us our links back.

No they have not changed the way the link command works. But they have added a new feature to your Google webmaster tools page. That would be the page where you check your sitemap status and all the other usefull info at. Now instead of just the "diagnostic", "statistics" and "sitemaps" links in the header of webmaster tools, there is also a new "links" link.

Clicking on that will give you a list of all the pages on your site that have external links to them. Pretty cool stuff if you ask me. To the right of each page listed is a clickable number that tells you how many links are directed pointing to that page. Click that number and you get something absolutely fantastic. A complete list of all those links. This has to be the most useful addition to webmaster tools by Google to date.

At the bottom of the page you can download pretty much everything to view offline. Thanks Google. I know where I will be playing for the near future. Give it a try yourself at your webmaster tools page. You do have one don't you?

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview

More info:
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Discover your links
Official Google Blog: Who links to your site?

[Code Monkey]

Has anybody else played with this? It is pretty awsome. I have found some pretty interesting backlinks I never even know about. I can also see why another site I own has Page Ranking troubles since there are thousands of links to the front end but very few internal links.

[sjim]

I messed up my page rank by designating my site without the www in front. apparantly all my internal links pointed to www but google recorded the site address without the www hence these pages didnt get ranked. i have since changed it back. Hopefully it will be recrawled and designated with the www. I outsmarted myself. I went from pr7 to 5 steady. Now at 3.
live and learn
The webmaster link back has some great stuff.

[Code Monkey]

That's a bit off topic but you can tell Google how to view your links in the webmaster tools page above. I prefer no www and I told google to use no www. Plus I have www 301 redirected to non www.

[sjim]

Yea thanks sorry for the off topic.
I wasnt sure how to designate all the urls as 301 redirects.

on topic
Using the back links I found a site that had framed a few pages from my site and kept the links up.
I didnt mind that because of the link back. That was better than one I found that had scraped my content. Just copied my text and used it as his site copy. A polite request to remove it and rewrite his copy worked.
The link back is a great tool. Have you noticed if you space the link after the semicolon ex -- link: www. mydoimain.com you will see more.

[Code Monkey]

This is not about the link: command. This is about google allowing you to see EVERY single link it see's in your webmaster tools page. The link: command is pretty much useless to a webmaster.

[sjim]

Wow thats a great feature.
I never realized the external links pointing to individual pages before.
I used to find them the old way.
This can be really valuable to see who likes what. Good and bad.

[Code Monkey]

You may have noticed that the newest date in the links was around Jan 15 2007. Well it looks like Google is in the process of updating the links at this very moment.

All my new sites are showing many new pages linked to and the prior ones have much higher numbers of links. It seems to be an ongoing and unfinished update though. If I click the link totals I am taken to a page with the old link totals and links. If I click the total of a new page linked to, then it says there are no links. So it will be interesting to watch how this updates over the next few days.

[G_Man]

I'll have to check that out. I still don't completely understand all this though...

[Brettmo]

I went to the site and inserted the link to my web page and it accepted the entry. However, when I click on verify, it links me to my home page rather than taking me to the location where I can get the verification file that the instructions tell me I should be able to find when I click on verify. Anyone have any idea why it won't take me to the verification page? Thanks.

[Code Monkey]

It doesn't give you a file. It gives you a name of a file. Then you need to create a file and name it that. Then upload it to the root directory of your site and click verify. Once they see the file you're site will be verified. Leave the file on your site.

[Brettmo]

It does not give me the name of the file -- The link "verify" sends me straight to my site.

Webmaster Help Center - How do I verify that I own a site?

On this page, it says:

Click on the "verify" link in the "Site Verified?" column on the My Sites page.

From the verification page, you can choose the verification method that works best for you.

The link verify next to my site name, links to my site and not to a verification page. It seems broken to me because it is not at behaving as the instructions say.

[Brettmo]

I back to the page to check out the source code:

<a href="/webmasters/tools/verify?siteUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww. my domain name %2F&amp;hl=en">  Verify </a>

So the code looks good, but in the status bar the text RDR: my domain name shows up and that is exactly what it does -- redirects me directly to my site rather than a verify page.

[Code Monkey]

Works for me. So I don't know what to tell you. Have you tried a different browser? Do you have javascript turned off?

[Brettmo]

Originally Posted by Code Monkey

Works for me. So I don't know what to tell you. Have you tried a different browser? Do you have javascript turned off?

I did not even entertain the notion that Firefox might not work with google's webmaster tools. I went there in the latest version of IE, which I don't like, and it worked fine. Thanks for offering a suggestion that I might have overlooked no matter how obvious.

[Code Monkey]

It works with Firefox for me. Check your settings and dump your cache.

[Brettmo]

Originally Posted by Code Monkey

It works with Firefox for me. Check your settings and dump your cache.

I cleared the cache and checked that JS is enabled and even after validating, I still have the same problem. The behavior is entirely different under IE than FF.

Oh well, skew it and roast it on an open fire, it works on IE for me and it is not something that I will use very often, so I'll just move on to bigger animals to skin. Sorry Monkey, I was not talking about you.

I just can't gt over those cute monkeys....

[Zaiaku]

Yahoo has this feature as well. With me it gives me alot more backlinks then Google but I have twice more pages indexed with google. I would use both search engines to see really how good you stand. MSN has these features as well but on their site the backlinks seem to lead you to a blank screen.

[da420]

I love this feature of Google. Glad they gave it back.

Originally Posted by Brettmo

I did not even entertain the notion that Firefox might not work with google's webmaster tools. I went there in the latest version of IE, which I don't like, and it worked fine. Thanks for offering a suggestion that I might have overlooked no matter how obvious.

Works for me in FireFox 2.0.

[Zaiaku]

I have FF2.0 as well works for me with no problem.

[michaeljvbull]

Smart PageRank is another neat resource for checking back links and page rank. It also gives a dollar value of the site and estimates vbmodder to be worth $1,312. Check it out.