Those of you who use the link commands in Live.com will have noticed that over the past week link: and linkdomain: have been returning blank results pages. This is not a temporary glitch but has been done on purpose by Live. According to their blog:
” We have been seeing broad use of these features by legitimate users but unfortunately also what appears to be mass automated usage for data mining. So for now, we have made the tough call to block all queries with these operators. We are doing our best to get this back online as soon as possible in a manner that allows folks that use this functionality for real queries.”
The linkfromdomain: command, which lists all the pages that a web site links to, is still working.
While Live makes up its mind about what to do with the commands try link and linkdomain in Yahoo. The results are not always as comprehensive as Live.com’s but will probably suffice in most situations. The syntax for the Yahoo’s link command is slightly different. To find pages that link to a specific page on a site it is:
link:http://www.yoursite.com/pagename.html
Note that you must include the ‘http://’
To find pages that link to any page on a site the syntax is similar to Live’s:
linkdomain:yoursite.com
Google also has a link command but it displays a small fraction of the results.
Karen –
Any word yet on a new link command for Live.com? MSN once was a great source for viewing all backlinks . . . Now they show none.
Thanks Paul for reminding me about this. Yes, the link commands are back online and I can’t remember who told me. Microsoft certainly did not announce their re-appearance. You simply put a + (plus sign) before both the link: and linkdomain: commands. For example +link:www.ukeig.org.uk. I’ll do a main blog posting now that you have jogged my memory on this.