Greetings, codevoyager!
Searching for an exact URL such as answers.google.com will give you
a page that says:
------------------------------------------------------------
Google Answers
Ask a question. Set your price. Get your answer. More than 500
carefully
screened Researchers are ready to answer your question ...
Google can show you the following information for this URL:
Show Google's cache of answers.google.com
Find web pages that are similar to answers.google.com
Find web pages that link to answers.google.com
Find web pages that contain the term "answers.google.com"
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You can also get to these Results via the Google Advanced Search page:
://www.google.com/advanced_search
In the top section of this page, you can use the option
"ONLY return results from the site or domain _________"
In the "Page-Specific Search" section, you have only the option to
search for pages "Similar" to, or pages that have "Links" to, the URL
in question, and there is no facility to narrow the "Links" down to
specific URLs.
***HOWEVER***
If you use the top Advanced Search section, you can manage a pretty
nice workaround for this.
In the "with the exact phrase" box (equivalent to enclosing the URL in
quotes), enter
answers.google.com
In the ""ONLY return results from the site or domain" box, enter
.edu
(The search defaults to 10 results per page; since I have a broadband
connection, I like to pull down "100 results per page".)
This will get you the following URL (I removed all the extraneous,
unneeded search parameters):
://www.google.com/search?num=100&as_epq=answers.google.com&as_sitesearch=.edu
which shows 1-25 of 41 Results.
If you click on
"repeat the search with the omitted results included"
at the bottom of the page, you will get
://www.google.com/search?q=+%22answers.google.com%22+site:.edu&num=100&filter=0
which shows 1-37 of 41 Results
(the discrepancy "1-37 of 41" is due to the way Google's Index may
differ from actual page links, depending on which of Google's many
servers the Search hits, on where the Googlebot is in the process of
the "Dance" (the big crawl of the entire web made by the Googlebot
every 4-6 weeks), and on what has been done by the Freshbot (the daily
temporary crawler of submitted URLs and sites that the Googlebot has
decided to crawl frequently) since the last "Dance".
Note that the first results listed, from http://tangra.si.umich.edu ,
are forum postings in a thread entitled
answers.google.com
and not actual links to the Google Answers site.
However, the rest of the Results appear to be actual links to Google
Answers from .edu sites.
When the link: function does not work for a URL, searching for all
pages which **contain** a given URL usually gives good results:
Because of Google's secrecy, it is not known for absolute certain, but
the general consensus among experienced webmasters who have
extensively studied Google's "backward links" function pretty much
agree that if a URL has a Page Rank less than 4, the link: function
will not work, and that if it has a Page Rank of 4 or higher, the
link: function will only return pages with a Rank of 4 or higher:
From Senior Forum Member "Beachboy" at WebmasterWorld:
"Your index page is PR3, Google won't show any inbound links unless
the page you're doing the query on is PR4 or greater."
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/4784.htm?highlight=inbound+links+higher
From Senior Forum Member "Birdman" at WebmasterWorld:
"It is thought that Google only shows backlinks from pages that have a
pr4 or higher."
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/7309.htm?highlight=inbound+links+higher
The "pages that contain" search (done **without** enclosing quotes)
will pull up pages that link to subpages for a URL, regardless of
those pages' rank -- in this case, a LOT more pages:
://www.google.com/search?q=%22answers.google.com%22&num=100&filter=0
1 - 100 of about 1,200
Whereas the link: function for this URL returns only the pages with a
rank of 4 or higher:
://www.google.com/search?q=link:G4NqTX7mAvAC:answers.google.com/&num=100&filter=0
1 - 100 of about 310
You can read more about the "Backward Links" functionality here:
"Google Web Search Features: Who links to you?"
://www.google.com/help/features.html#link
and here:
"Google Toolbar Features"
http://toolbar.google.com/button_help.html
Before Rating my Answer, if you have any questions about this
information, please post a Request for Clarification, and I will be
glad to see what I can do for you.
Best Wishes on getting your website Ranking high, with lots of search
hits!
Regards,
aceresearcher |
Clarification of Answer by
aceresearcher-ga
on
13 May 2003 23:20 PDT
codevoyager,
My wonderful Researcher colleague webadept-ga has helpfully provided
me with some additional information.
Although the Google Help description shows it with *NO* spaces:
link:www.google.com
://www.google.com/help/features.html#link
you *CAN* get results for a "site" specification with the "link" or
"links" command *IF* you separate the colon by spaces before and after
the colon:
link : answers.google.com site:.edu
://www.google.com/search?q=link+%3A+answers.google.com++site%3A.edu
Results 1 - 8 of 8
Oddly, results using the command "link :" differ slightly from those
using the command "links :"
links : answers.google.com site:.edu
://www.google.com/search?q=links+%3A+answers.google.com++site%3A.edu
Results 1 - 10 of about 26
(Just another one of Google's "delightful quirks". ;-)
Another option suggested by webadept-ga is to just use the link /
links command:
link : answers.google.com
://www.google.com/search?q=link+%3A+answers.google.com
Results 1 - 10 of about 369
links : answers.google.com
://www.google.com/search?q=links%3A+answers.google.com
Results 1 - 10 of about 464
Then go to the bottom of the page, click on the "Search within
results" hyperlink to the right of the "Google Search" button, enter
site: .edu
and click the "Search within results" button:
link : answers.google.com site: .edu
://www.google.com/search?q=link+%3A+answers.google.com&as_q=site%3A+.edu
Results 1 - 10 of about 288
links : answers.google.com site: .edu
://www.google.com/search?q=links+%3A+answers.google.com&as_q=site%3A+.edu
Results 1 - 10 of about 361
Note that both these sets of results will only work for sites with a
Page Rank of 4 or higher, and will only show linking pages that have a
Page Rank of 4 or higher.
As you can see from all the examples I posted earlier, and in this
Clarification, you will get different results depending on which
method you use. You will want to experiment a little to determine
which method works best for your purposes.
I hope that you find this additional information very helpful.
Best Wishes!
ace
|
