www.lingerie-confidential.co.uk shows as having only six links,
www.emporiolingerie.com has over 100. Yet when I check the very first
link shown when searching link:www.emporiolingerie.com I find
www.eliteshops.co.uk also has a link to
www.lingerie-confidential.co.uk. I am therefore concerned that the
links to www.lingerie-confidential.co.uk are somehow being blanked and
this is having a knock-on effect on my rating. As an existing adword
advertisers you will understand my concern.

Thank you

James Moriarty

Hi there,

Google says:

"One way to determine who is linking to the dead site is to try a link
search. You can find instructions on how to do this on our features
page. Please note that this process does not work for all of the sites
in our index."
://www.google.com/webmasters/3.html

In general, a page that Google shows more backward links for will do
better in search results, because Google has decided that more quality
pages are linking to it, in effect more quality votes as to its own
quality.

Simply put, Google's backward links does not show every backward link.
Usually it only shows those from pages that have a PR of 4 or greater.
I say "usually", because lately the PageRank function of the Google
ToolBar has been a little unreliable. I am consistently getting
different figures on my computer in Australia than other folk
elsewhere are getting.

I would only be concerned if the ranking of your site in search
results drops significantly, combined with your site receiving less
visitors. That is the truest indicator of something going amiss

The best search engine for finding backward links is AlltheWeb. Enter
your site's URL for a result like this:
http://www.alltheweb.com/urlinfo?q=www.lingerie-confidential.co.uk&c=web&cs=utf-8

...then just click on the link that says:
Find all 186 external web pages that link to
"www.lingerie-confidential.co.uk"

Do not be concerned by the number of links displayed by Google. The
number of links shown does not influence PageRank, it is the other way
round - the links shown are a result of the PageRank of the pages
concerned.

Also, Google Adwords and regular search results are seperate entities,
and do not affect each other in any way. In the same manner, we at
Google Answers are independent from the Google search engine, and we
have no special insights as to its workings, aside from what we
discover from searching the web, and/or personal experience.


Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by jimbom-ga on 21 Aug 2003 06:37 PDT

Hi Robert

Thank you for your help but I am still not clear why a link from the
example given (www.eliteshops.co.uk) shows up when you check for links
through Google for one web site and not another - when there is a link
to both. Webposition Gold software is of the view that the lack of
links has affected www.lingerie-confidential.co.uk's ranking with
Google but I do not know how to increase the number of links without
understanding why they are not showing up in the first place. (If that
makes sense?)

---

Clarification of Answer by robertskelton-ga on 21 Aug 2003 14:17 PDT

The only page within Elite Shops where I could find your site linked
to is:
http://www.eliteshops.co.uk/cgi-bin/webdata_shops.pl?pagenum=2&cgifunction=Search&Cat=clothing&SubCat=lingerie

This page has not been indexed by Google. Google often chooses not to
index dynamically generated pages.

So, the corresponding page that has a link to Emporio is not where
Google gets the link from:
http://www.eliteshops.co.uk/cgi-bin/webdata_shops.pl?cgifunction=Search&Cat=clothing&SubCat=lingerie

...but rather from these pages, which are not dynamically generated.
Emporio links are via a button graphic ad on the bottom left of each
page. If your site was advertised there, then the links to your site
would be noticed by Google as well:

Elite Shops UK - Travel
www.eliteshops.co.uk/travel/travel.htm

Elite Shops UK - Sport & Leisure
www.eliteshops.co.uk/sport/sport.htm 

Elite Shops UK - DVD Charts with Price Comparison
www.eliteshops.co.uk/dvdandvideo/dvdcharts.htm 

Elite Shops UK - Gamecube Chart
www.eliteshops.co.uk/video%20games/gamecube.htm

Elite Shops UK - Childrens Pages
www.eliteshops.co.uk/children/children.htm 

Elite Shops UK - Video Games
www.eliteshops.co.uk/video%20games/ps2%20(21-30).htm 

PC CD Chart With Price Comparison
www.eliteshops.co.uk/video%20games/pc.htm 

Elite Shops UK - Department Stores & Catalogues
www.eliteshops.co.uk/malls/malls.htm

Elite Shops UK - DIY & Gardening
www.eliteshops.co.uk/DIY/DIY.htm 


You are correct - the number of links to a page, basically its
popularity, has an affect on search result ranking, as does the
appearances of the keywords in the title, headings, and text of the
page. The nost difficult aspect of search engine optimization is
getting other sites to link to yours, especially if you have a
commercial site.

A word of warning - do not use Web Position Gold to check the ranking
of your site in Google search results. Google may penalize your site
if you do:

"Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check
rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate
our terms of service. Google does not recommend the use of products
such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries
to Google."
://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Rob.