Is Google Updating Link Counts or Not?

6th August 2007

Well, yes they are… Google seems to be updating the link: command over (at least) the past three days, and for me, it is showing less links than before in many cases.

Does this mean that Google is no longer “counting” certain links for ranking purposes? Well, that’s anybody’s guess right now…

If you are logged into Google Webmaster Central and you go to your links tab, you can still see all of the external links pointing to your pages that Google is aware of, and these numbers do not appear to have dropped at all.

Remember, if you are just at the Google homepage, and you type link:www.domainname.com, as usual, you are seeing only a small representation of these links, and this is the number that seems to be reporting lower.

As a rule, nobody really knows which links Google are “counting” for relevancy and ranking purposes. The links you get when you use the public link: command are not really the only links that Google “counts” for ranking purposes, and there are also links that “count” that are not shown when you use the public link command. Google holds this information close to the vest for competitive purposes.

While I understand the need for Google’s secrecy, and keeping the exact links that matter somewhat secret, it does make for some confusing end of month client reporting, when we are attempting to show decent linkbuilding progress to clients. Combined with the fact that the data is about three months old, that’s why the public link: command appears to be almost worthless these days.

I’m keeping my eyes on the forums and on certain blogs, but I don’t see this being discussed yet. If anyone reading this has any links to authoritative sources regarding this subject, please comment here.