View all Your Backlinks in Google - Is this a Temporary Slip Up?

Posted July 12th, 2007 by Brian Gilley

We discovered a newer version of a popular search operator this afternoon to help web owners view a much larger number of backlinks and on-page references (like SEOposition.com w/o the anchor) from Google. It used to be very easy to view your backlinks in Google using the link: operator but this old method only gives a partial list of total backlinks that link to your site and is by no means a comprehensive look at your total number of backlinks.

Since this new back links method will likely be a temporary loophole, here's how to view your total number of back links in Google using the new method.

The search operator to use -- "site:.com websitename.com -site:websitename.com." Let's look at a live example for SEOposition.com's backlinks using this new operator (note: this only shows ".com" URLs pointing to SEOposition.com). Now look at the old method for comparison for SEOposition using the link: operator. The difference is 2,450 .com's using the new method compared to 693 using the old method.

Here's a few more variations of the new backlinks operator for Google to get different types of links, like .net's, .org's, .edu's, etc.

site:.com websitename.com -site:websitename.com
site:.org websitename.com -site:websitename.com
site:.edu websitename.com -site:websitename.com

This is pretty significant because Google closed down the ability to view all your backlinks some time ago because of abuse and the ability for site owners to take advantage of analyzing a competitor's backlinks to build their own.

This will likely be shut down soon, but should give webmasters a quick assessment of their (and competitors) backlinks beforehand.

Update 7-13-07: This new operator also shows some nofollow links as well as some HTML references (not links) to your website, i.e. "www.websitename.com" occurring on external web pages. This is interesting since the old link: operator and Google Webmaster Tools only have shown the <a href referenced backlinks since their inception, always excluding nofollowed links or HTML references.

9 Comments

Danny Foo (not verified)

July 12th, 2007

When I ran mine, I never knew I actually had that many links all over the place. I even found a domain pointing directly to one of my blog posts though I don't own the domain name. Weird!

But thanks for this. :)

Tony Spencer (not verified)

July 13th, 2007

This query is not showing backlinks. In english this query says: "Show me all pages on dot com sites (site:.com) that have the phrase 'seoposition.com' on the page (seoposition.com) but exclude any pages from the domain seoposition.com (-site:seoposition.com)." Case in point: This URL is listed in the results (around #72 for me) yet it does not produce a backlink to seoposition.com: http://www.linkedseo.com/list.php?loc=Raleigh...

Tony Spencer (not verified)

July 13th, 2007

If you do find a hole, don't post it here! Email me quietly instead! :)

Alex Centeno (not verified)

July 16th, 2007

Is true, I jumped to conclusions to fast. It is all my fault. I am sorry, nevertheless it is still helpful for the savvy interactive marketing that needs an extra tool.

In the name of the CostaRican community we apologize. LOL.

A. Centeno
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Drew Stauffer (not verified)

July 17th, 2007

This is pretty interesting. These various operators can really come in handy if you know what they are.

MB Web Design (not verified)

September 8th, 2007

The only proper check to links is in webmaster tools. All their publicly viewable data is always flawed somehow

PokerOfficer (not verified)

November 21st, 2008

This works a lot better if you include quotes around the "website.com" otherwise it treats website and com as two separate search terms.

Still doesn't only include links but it helps find bare links (without title).

francis (not verified)

May 12th, 2009

Do you means, using google sitemap to link???

Jitendra (not verified)

September 22nd, 2009

This query does't shows the backlinks. In english this query says: "Show me all pages on dot com sites (site:.com) that have the phrase 'seoposition.com' on the page (seoposition.com) but exclude any pages from the domain seoposition.com (-site:seoposition.com)." Case in point: This URL is listed in the results (around #72 for me) yet it does not produce a backlink to seoposition.com.
SO it Apologize for this.