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- You can also use Google Webmaster Tools, and the ‘links tab’ in those tools, but these are also known to be out of date and inaccurate.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.
Entry Filed under: SEO Tools
If you found this page useful, consider linking to it.
Simply copy and paste the code below into your web site (Ctrl+C to copy)
It will look like this: How to Count Inlinks / Backlinks to Your Site using Yahoo
7 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
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed