Back Link Confusion: How do links on pages become BLs?

[Johnny]

Howdy,

If I search google for "cpap.com" 1090 results are returned.

If I search google for "link: cpap.com" 165 returned are returned.

If I search google for "link: www.cpap.com" 69 returned are returned.

If I search google for "link: http://www.cpap.com" 36 results are returned.

These numbers are confusing to me and I have two questions concerning them:

1. In those 1090 results, there were a lot more than 165, 69 or 36 links. How does a link to your website "graduate" into a BL? By what criteria? Over what time span?

2. Which back link (http://, http://www, plain .com) matters for your ranking on a keyword? All three, a combo, just one?


Thanks very much in advance for the help. This board is a great source of information.

[jocelyn]

The backlinks google gives now are just a random sample it seems.
They were never acurate from the start.

[Razvan Pop]

Try:
link:www.cpap.com

not

link: www.cpap.com

[owlcroft]

If I search google for "link: cpap.com" 165 returned are returned.

If I search google for "link: www.cpap.com" 69 returned are returned.RED FLAG!

It doesn't matter whether you prefer cpap.com as your "correct" URL or like www.cpap.com better; just pick one that pleases you.

Then go into your .htaccess file and set up a 301 Redirect for the "wrong" form to the "right" form.

You are losing potential PR value from backlinks by having it split between the two forms. To Google, http://www.cpap.com/ and http://cpap.com/ are two different pages unless you tell it otherwise via a 301. If, just to pick one for an example, the form www.cpap.com is your personally preferred form, Google is telling you that some large number of links from sites that meant to link to your front page are being counted instead against a "shadow copy" of that page. In essence, you are competing against yourself for PR and SERPs by splitting the incoming links that way.

You will find more discussion, and fixup instructions, at this "SEO Tip" (That pesky www. (http://seo-toys/tips-on-seo/seo-tips-3.shtml)).

[seo guy]

The correct version is link:http://www.seo-guy.com or in your case link:http://www.cpap.com this is exactly how using the toolbar to check it works http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&q=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.cpap.com you have 60 backlinks

As for hte other pages, that can be a lot of things, not every time your site is mentioned does it mean they are linking to you, thus that 1000+ is really a combonation of references, partial references and many other things (Including backlinks) to your domain.

[Eric Bland]

Yes, in addition backlinks are usually registed by google by sites with PR 4+, but they can also show form pr 3,2,1 and on occassion PR 0. Algorithms can be tricky to figure out.

[bobmutch]

owlcroft: Your link is bad on your last post in this line, "You will find more discussion, and fixup instructions, at this "SEO Tip" (That pesky www.). It should be http://seo-toys.com/tips-on-seo/seo-tips-3.shtml not http://seo-toys/tips-on-seo/seo-tips-3.shtml .