Matt Cutts on Google link: Command
My goodness, I knew that Matt was making some videos about questions he has had regarding SEO, etc., but I didn’t realise how many he had made. Well done Matt, it must have been a hell of a session(s).
I found this video regarding checking for back links, etc. Matt also mentions the ‘link:’ search command. I did an article on the Google ‘link:’ command a few days ago and talked about its flakiness. Matt mentioned the Google stance that they only show a few links to give a small overview of the back link profile to protect the link data from prying eyes, etc. I am not saying that this is not on the money, it is just that the ‘weirdness’ of some of the results is puzzling. Also, how exactly do Google get a real randomness to this subsection of results?
Anyway, here is Matt’s video.
Let’s not put too much weight on this analysis. I am sure it is not going to lead us to the Google search holy grail or anything. I have just always thought that it was very strange for the best search company in the world to put its name to flaky results, no matter how they down play it.
Thanks for wonderful article but please tell me google link:command shows do follow and no follow both links or only do follow. As everybody is saying link:command is do follow.
Hi Jackin,
The ‘link:’ results on Google are so up and down that I can’t totally verify that they contain ‘nofollow’ links too. However, if you check your links on Google Webmaster Tool you will find both ‘nofollow’ and ‘do follow’ link, so you can probably get both types on the various ways you get the results from the ‘link:’ command.