Google now gives webmasters more data about what sites are linking to them. The amount of spam these links reveal is amazing.

In our “What we want from Google this Christmas” post we asked for real numbers for back-links to our site.

“We would really like to know how many sites are linking to us,” we wrote, “but your link command (link:www.pandia.com) is totally unreliable. We know, because Yahoo! sometimes reports 1000 times more links than you do, and we doubt that’s due to a larger database.”

We have not been the only ones asking for this, and Google is listening.

In a post in the Google Webmaster Central Blog Peeyush informs us that:

Now you can use webmaster tools to view a much larger sample of links to pages on your site that we found on the web. Unlike the link: operator, this data is much more comprehensive and can be classified, filtered, and downloaded. All you need to do is verify site ownership to see this information.

The number of inbound links to Pandia registered by Google continues to be much lower than Yahoo’s, but the figure seems definitely to be much more realistic.

Thank you Google! This is exactly the kind of thing that helps your standing among webmasters.

Spam, spam, spam

It is interesting to note that Google — unlike Yahoo! — considers this information confidential, i.e. it is only the owners of a site that get access to this data.

So why is that and why haven’t Google done this before? One possible explanation is that the data reveals a tremendous amount of spam. Of the sites linking to Pandia, a large number are spammy scraper sites that make use of our RRS feed to generate content.

The number of adult sites pointing in our direction is plain out scary. There are no links to our site on the porn pages that appear in the list, so we guess that we are talking about cloaked sites here (sites that presents different content to the search engines than the human visitor).

The fact that the backlink function reveals so much spam, may have made Google more than a little hesitant: If the webmasters see all these spammy sites linking to them, they may conclude that the regular search results are equally compromised.

So it should be noted that regular search results are not in any way pestered by this amount of spam. The data for our site clearly tells us something about the magnitude of the problems facing search engines like Google, though.

This may be why Google has decided to keep the old link: query as it is. If you want to identify “real” and “decent” sites linking to yours, the link: command remains the best tool.

The fact that the new tools will help draw webmasters to the Webmaster Central, may also have influenced Google to keep the raw data away from the general public.

See the Google Blog for more information.
You can sign up for your Webmaster Tools here.

See also: Google Releases New Link Reporting Tools (Search Engine Land)
Yahoo! Link Badge