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Google Releases New Link Reporting Tools For years, Google’s link: command (and see here) has deliberately failed to show all the links to a website. This came out of Google’s fear that site owners simply wanted the data to try and manipulate rankings — which was pretty true. Instead, they only provided a sampling of backlinks. You still won’t get absolutely all the links Google knows about. link:searchengineland.com That’s showing about 3,000 links to the Search Engine Land web site (note, for some people, you might see no results, due to an apparent glitch). Why make the shift? “Webmasters have been wanting more comprehensive link data from us for a long time,” said Vanessa Fox, product manager for Google Webmaster Central. Fox added that Google is also more comfortable releasing the data because it is going only to specific site owners, rather than to the world at large. What links can you get and how do you obtain them? The New Links Tab To access the data, you have to be verified Google Webmaster Central user.

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