Understanding Backlinks from Search Engines

Most Search Engine Optimizers understand the importance of the backlinks in order for a website to succeed. Most search engines take into account of the backlinks quality for their ranking algorithm. We will cover the top three search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) here and discuss how they treat backlinks from their point of view.

The most popular search engine, Google, places great emphasis on backlinks. In fact, relevant backlinks is all a website needs to achieve a high ranking in Google result page. Google, however, does not shows all the indexed backlinks when user queries with the link: operator. In addition, Google does not update their backlink index as frequent as their search results

It is believed that multiple backlinks from a same domain does not have the stack effect in Google. For example, links from forum signatures and directories will have minimum weigh in Google's ranking algorithm.
Yahoo, on the other hand, chooses to display all the backlinks to the users. A search with the link: operator often reveals most of a page's backlinks to screen. Although they display most of the backlinks, it does not mean that they value them as much as in Google. Unfortunately, backlinks are not as important as they are in Yahoo than in Google

Yahoo has introduced a site explorer interface to aid the webmasters in locating the backlinks and other useful information. Yahoo also provides one of the best API for the web masters' usage.
MSN also offers to display all the backlinks to the user with the link: operator query. The backlinks update in MSN also seems to be the most updated among all the three search engines. It may seems that MSN focus a lot on backlinks but this is usually not the case. Backlinks are not as important as keyword domain in MSN's point of view.

In conclusion, Google is the only search engine that put a lot of focus on backlinks in their ranking formula and since they are the most popular search engine, backlinks are important for every website. It is recommended to use Yahoo or MSN to check for backlinks because they show a more complete listing.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Marketing is becoming more and more important to businesses and not just those solely online. There are a lot of information to weed through and the benefits of having us as the single point. Search Marketing of which it is now commonly known has come a long way since the days of Search Engine Optimization. In the early days all you had to do is build a nice site with some good content then off you go building links to your site. With good content and enough backlinks with a particular anchor text would be enough. However things have changed a lot over time and search engines also. More people now use the internet than ever. And it is of course big business with everyone wanting a slice.

Because of the nature in which things have evolved the names Search Engine Optimization has too. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Search Marketing has really taken over the whole SEO thing. This is due to whole new wave of ways in which we use the internet and of course how search engines have advanced. The most prominent advance is in Social Media or Social Networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. These not only serve as a way of people communication with each other, but also are a powerful marketing tool. Google is still the number one place to be seen, but an equal amount of publicity and traffic can be obtained from twitter and Facebook.