Feb 07
7

Google Backlinks

7 Comments

Matt tells us all about the new Google backlinks feature in the webmaster console.

I had a little look at this and must confess, think its pretty cool in an ‘ooh this is interesting kind of way’.

The numbers aside, what I really liked was how it enables you to drill down to individual pages and see the number of external links pointing to each URI.

If you have a good site with lots of different types of content a thing like this is a handy feature. If there are a high number of links to a certain page, then it could mean that this page is adding lots of value to lots of different people, which could be interpreted as a do-more-of-this type-of-thing signal. Sure, you could find out similar stuff from logfile analysis too, but it might take a little longer to identify such specifics.

I’m not going to say too much on this as much of it has already been said. What I’d like to see in addition would be a few extras like.The ability to identify what types of links these were; eg were they nofollow, what is the makeup of the anchor text, what were the dates these links were 1st encountered/registered, what is the pagerank of these external in links, how do my pages rank for their target terms. Sure, again, I could go out and look at these things myself, Google could make it all a bit easier though. Maybe someone could make a little app that enabled people to plugin their csv datasets and obtain such a report.

Anyone for a spot of cURLing?  ;)

Search Marketing Services Holistic Search

This entry was posted on February 7, 2007 at 9:42 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in google search engines seo by robwatts 7 Comments

7 Responses to "Google Backlinks"

  • Andy Beard says:
    February 7, 2007 at 1:00 pm
    Reply

    In theory pink box links shouldn’t be on the report

    I just spotted a slight oversight on my generator too ;)

  • robwatts says:
    February 7, 2007 at 6:45 pm
    Reply

    Well, the problem with the theory is that the policy is a bit of a shifting target.I can’t quite recall the source, but i’m pretty sure i read something akin to an interpretation being,(paraphrasing) “I don’t vouch for this link, its untrusted” which isn’t the same as “I dont vouch for this link dont aply any link juice” take Wikipedia for example, it used to link out to lots of ‘quality’ resources, freely giving link juice etc. Suddenly it decided that these links are no longer trustworthy, its not in a position to vouch for them…for a human edited thing thats kinda sucky.Its akin to saying, hey don’t trust us, we are just a resource of randomly edited content with external links to sides of dubious repute. In other words, these links are not ok for the search engines, but ok for its users.

    I know others have reported their nofollows turning up as backlinks too which kinda dilutes any concrete positions.

    Bottom line is, they (the SE’s) can choose to do what they like with a link and we will always be playing catch up theorising. I suspect its more a tool for them than a tool for us.

    Right, off to look at your generator oversight :D

  • Marc Chase says:
    April 7, 2007 at 10:59 am
    Reply

    I just looked at that tool and had a question. A lot of crap sites have linked to me. Don’t know who they are or why they linked to me becuase there is no relevance in our sites. e.g. a dating site, some cheap little watch company etc.

    Does that hurt me in the sense that Im being associated with crap?

  • robwatts says:
    April 9, 2007 at 5:58 pm
    Reply

    Possibly Marc, but i doubt it, its one of those unapprovables. Google used to say things akin to ‘there isnt anything a 3rd party can do to negatively affect your site’. That said, it cant really help your link profile if you don’t have any site of authority linking to you, or if you aren’t creating buzz in your niche either (think blogosphere)

    I have a site stuck in the doldrums. It has lots of reciprocals and a degree of crappy sites linking to it too. It doesnt rank very well at all. I suspect its because either a)it has some form of manually applied ‘can’t rank past page 3′ penalty b)Its suffering from a) but hasn’t had the benefit of being whitelisted or c) it just doesnt have enough of the right type of links pointing to it.

    A cursory glance at the site in your post suggests that its a relatively new site in a massively competitive (finance) market place so is really going to have to work hard to get to where you want it to be. A forum and a blog will help, but ultimately you want to be creating interest, getting people to talk about you and what you do for others – IMO therin lies a huge challenge, especially in (for me at least) a marketplace that is about as interesting as paint drying! heh don’t get me wrong i love a £ note too, but only in the sense of spending the things! :D

    Good luck with it Mark, thanks for commenting

  • Marc Chase says:
    April 9, 2007 at 6:05 pm
    Reply

    LOL interesting as paint drying – I hear you on that one. I love what we do, but the industry as sleazy, competitive and boring as it is makes me wish I was a celebrity columnist at times.

    THanks for the input, it is truly appreciated.

  • Andy Beard says:
    April 9, 2007 at 6:27 pm
    Reply

    Marc I am still going to be writing that SEO review with those few tips we discussed. At lest it will give you one reasonable link, but I wouldn’t worry about the bad links unless that is all you have. I get lots of links from “aggregators” and don’t worry about where content ends up. I even occasionally see some traffic from the splogs.

  • Marc Chase says:
    April 9, 2007 at 6:54 pm
    Reply

    Hey Thanks Andy, you’re a great guy.

    Don’t forget, if you want…send me the basics and I’ll make a few calls.

    Glad I found both these blogs. both credits to the community

Leave a Comment