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A DigitalPoint Forums thread has a lot of recent discussion on a Google backlink update occurring at certain datacenters. But should we be watching these changes anymore?
We now have the Google Webmaster Central Link Tool that gives us all of our backlinks.
Does tracking link:domain.com changes at Google.com, as opposed to tracking our linkage data at Webmaster Central add anything?
In the past, link updates symbolized a Google Dance - a shift in rankings that occurred about once a month. Not ranking changes happen all the time. So is there a benefit to tracking these changes anymore?
We all know Google only shows a random sample of your links with the link command. So again, why track it?
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.
Comments:
Katinka Hesselink
03/21/2007 06:59 pm
I do think it's an absolute waste of time to check the backlinks reported through the google link: command. It doesn't mean a thing. Then again, I don't think checking google PR across data centers is worth our time either. That does mean something, but the real metric is the amount of visitors a site gets. I am interested to see what queries people use to get to my site, and whether I can increase that number per query or in general. Backlinks are a numbers game. Since most links that get reported are probably worth very little for the actual rankings, I wonder what looking at them actually teaches. More interesting is: who is not linking to this site that should be?
Giantmouse
03/22/2007 09:50 am
It's a good point you have brought up here. It almost seems like Google are phazing out the link command in favour of the Webmasters central tools, why? Think about it, only the owner of the site can access the link info for a particular domain using the Webmaster central tools, anybody can use the link commmand to see which sites are linking to a high ranking site and replicate that. Google removing this valuable link info means people can't copy successful sites link structure.