Google Announces Backlink Tool for Webmasters

February 9, 2007 // Drew Stauffer

Google has released a new feature in their Webmasters Central that allows you to see the backlinks to your site. Although this is a huge advancement to their console, Matt Cutts is quick to put things into perspective:

Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight. I’m going to say that again: Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight. Sometime in the next year, someone will say “But I saw an insert-link-fad-here backlink show up in Google’s backlink tool, so it must count. Right?” And then I’ll point them back here, where I say do not assume just because you see a backlink that itâ€™s carrying weight.

This is a very nice feature that Google has added compared to their link: operator, which only gives you a sample of your backlinks. But why is Google still preventing us from seeing all of our backlinks? Yahooâ€™s Site Explorer still shows a much larger percentage of backlinks, but are they as legitimate?

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