How to Count Inlinks / Backlinks to Your Site using Yahoo

March 7th, 2007

What are inlinks (Backlinks)?

Inlinks (also known as backlinks) are an important measure of the ‘popularity’ of your site – the greater the number of other sites that link to you, the more likely it is that you will have a high Pagerank (PR – see a definition of pagerank here).

Does Google show Backlinks I have to my site?

Yes, but not accurately. There are two main ways:-

You can use the link: modifier in a google search (eg link:www.utheguru.com) but it’s known far and wide as being very inaccurate – in fact google claims that it is deliberately inaccurate.
You can also use Google Webmaster Tools, and the ‘links tab’ in those tools, but these are also known to be out of date and inaccurate.

A More Accurate Backlink Count – Yahoo Site Explorer

Yahoo, in my honest opinion, has the most up-to-date way of counting links to your site – it is called Yahoo Site Explorer.

How to use Yahoo Site Explorer to Count Inlinks (Backlinks)

Here’s a brief step by step guide to using this Yahoo Site Explorer Feature. (You can click on the thumbnails to get a full size view).

Step 1 – go to www.yahoo.com and enter site: followed by the name of your site in the search box (eg site:www.utheguru.com). This will take you to Site Explorer.

Step 2 – At the top left hand side above the search results, click on ‘inlinks’

Step 3 – In the Leftmost ‘Show Links’ Box, click on ‘except from this domain’ – This stops Yahoo from including links from within your own site.

Step 4 – In the next drop down box across (to:), click on either ‘Entire Site’ or ‘Only This URL’ – I’d suggest ‘Entire Site’ is best, but you can check links to individual URL’s using the other option, which can be handy.

Step 5 – Voila! You can now see how many inlinks you have, and where they come from.

Other Tools

I have a WordPress Plugin that will give you a count of other sites linking to you automatically – it’s called the wordpress yahoo sidebar widget, and you can see it here.

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30 Comments Add your own

1. Bridesburgmom | March 7th, 2007 at 2:41 pm

Thank You So Much For This! So Helpful! Hopefully My Site Will Have A High PR Soon.
2. DuckMan | March 7th, 2007 at 3:24 pm

No problems mate – just remember, PR is only one part of the equation – if you want good positioning in Google, you should aim for good PR and good content –

For tips on writing good content, you can have a look around this site and also sites like the google webmaster tools forum (as you already have)

Cheers,

TheDuck (Dockarl)
3. Susie J | March 12th, 2007 at 7:06 am

Can you have a bad link? I checked my inlinks through technorati. A few stood out with questions marks. Here’s a couple of them:

{links removed by theDuck}

These sites do not have any of their own content — just a list of other sties. There is a link to my site to a specific article — but it does not identify my site by name.
4. DuckMan | March 12th, 2007 at 8:38 am

Hi Susie – thanks for a great question.

These are called ‘scraper sites’ and I’ve written an answer for you in this article about scraper sites.

Cheers,

theDuck
5. sohbet | March 25th, 2007 at 10:00 am

thanks
6. Terry | June 30th, 2007 at 12:15 am

I use a free tool called Link Popularity Check from http://www.axandra.com/ and this will show you all your links from Yahoo and also links from AllTheWeb, Altavista, Google/Tiscali and MSN/Live.

You can set it up for many websites as you want and clicking on the results will send you to the search engine page with a list of all the links and URLs.

Very useful tool.
7. Soiap Bens | February 9th, 2008 at 2:25 am

Alees English
8. metin | June 5th, 2008 at 11:17 pm

Thank You So Much For This! So Helpful! Hopefully My Site Will Have A High PR Soon.
9. jedzlink | June 10th, 2008 at 5:29 pm

I’ve been using siteexplorer and since then been using it for my day-to-day backlink report. This really a cool seo tool. Thanks
10. mert | June 12th, 2008 at 8:17 am

For tips on writing good content
11. Embroidery Designs | September 7th, 2008 at 12:54 pm

Thank you you the info
12. sohbet | September 8th, 2008 at 2:49 pm

I use a free tool called Link Popularity Check from http://www.axandra.com/ and this will show you all your links from Yahoo and also links from AllTheWeb, Altavista, Google/Tiscali and MSN/Live.

You can set it up for many websites as you want and clicking on the results will send you to the search engine page with a list of all the links and URLs.

Very useful tool.
13. indirim | September 23rd, 2008 at 7:36 am

c=c+1 (:
14. ofis büro mobilyaları | November 3rd, 2008 at 10:22 pm

thanks 😉
15. mike | November 28th, 2008 at 1:39 pm

This is a great tool. I use it all the time now.
16. seo firm | January 8th, 2009 at 12:20 am

Its Great useful information
17. Cristian Mihailovici Pantavievici | January 22nd, 2009 at 5:41 am

found your “How to Count Inlinks” explanation about Yahoo , searching for the internet.

I’ve tried many ways to find how many incoming link I have, and each time i have errors. My site is new, and it isn’t yet indexed by yahoo or google.

I’ve tried just a few moments ago the Yahoo Site Explorer, like you said, and , exactly like before, i get strange results. When I searched first time for my links, they were like 139 , and then just pressed refresh, they were 107 … When I pressed to go to page 2 of the results, they were 121 links:D

When i did like you said, Show Links – Except from this domain, I had 147 incomming links.. so more links !!!!

So damn strange 😀
18. Eldritch | February 18th, 2009 at 8:49 am

Thanks for the useful info 🙂
19. acente | March 7th, 2009 at 10:15 pm

adskj oasd ashdoq dö asd öamd
20. Andre | April 6th, 2009 at 1:32 pm

Do you know anything about backlinks to your www or no www domain name? there is a difference…

My site has 52 backlinks to my www and 111 backlinks to my no www.

I made this .htaccess file to make the no www a www website.

So do the no www backlinks count towards my www url now?
21. James | May 7th, 2009 at 8:50 am

Thanks a lot! I have done this before, but needed a quick reminder. Good post!
22. backlinks | June 26th, 2009 at 9:57 am

sharing such helpful information is great it can help me at my backlinks tnx!!!!
23. nitendra | July 17th, 2009 at 12:45 am

i like this article. it had solved my problems thanks
24. Kevin | July 21st, 2009 at 7:28 pm

Any significance to the order of the inlinks? Are the higher quality links listed first?
25. Hayden | July 29th, 2009 at 9:50 pm

Great info – thanks mate and keep it up

Hayden
26. chat | August 27th, 2009 at 11:22 am

I’ve tried many ways to find how many incoming link I have, and each time i have errors. My site is new, and it isn’t yet indexed by yahoo or google.

I’ve tried just a few moments ago the Yahoo Site Explorer, like you said, and , exactly like before, i get strange results. When I searched first time for my links, they were like 139 , and then just pressed refresh, they were 107 … When I pressed to go to page 2 of the results, they were 121 links:D
27. Osborne Brook | December 1st, 2009 at 3:50 am

Very nice article!
I cannot understand why Google’s inlinks service is still so poor given their huge market share. Site explorer is the only reason why I still use Yahoo, very useful and organised information indeed.
28. Guitar Pick Chrystal | June 28th, 2010 at 2:09 am

Very cool. Thanks for the tip Yahoo shows much more inlinks than the webmaster tools in google. It’s annoying that google can’t manage to give webmasters accurate link backs when you are logged into your account.
29. Guitar Pick Chrystal | October 26th, 2010 at 7:28 pm

Very cool. Thanks for the tip Yahoo shows much more inlinks than the webmaster tools in google. It’s annoying that google can’t manage to give webmasters accurate link backs when you are logged into your account.
30. JB | April 6th, 2011 at 7:16 am

Here it is four years later and this is still extremely helpful. Thank you!

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