How do you check indexed backlinks?



I have been using Yahoo Site explorer, but I am now wondering if backlinks indexed by Google will be completely different.

if yahoo sees them, then most likely google sees them. The most reliable source is your webmaster tools for that domain.

Also, your rankings are more important than the shear number of backlinks.
 
if yahoo sees them, then most likely google sees them. The most reliable source is your webmaster tools for that domain.

Also, your rankings are more important than the shear number of backlinks.

Thank you.
I was just getting a little anxious, since I have backlinks on site explorer, but not ranking yet on any search engine. I guess patience is the name of the game.
 
I have been using Yahoo Site explorer, but I am now wondering if backlinks indexed by Google will be completely different.

True. Google seem to gather backlinks a damn site slower. Everyone uses Yahoo to keep an eye on their backlinks. Check out Scrapebox, it can do this and has 100 other great uses
 
While you will see many more of your links in Yahoo than in Google when using the link: search you will still not see all of them. Also while the number that you see in Yahoo is a pretty good indicator of how many you may have in Google you really just never know.

A good way to check for links is to search for the pages the links are on and see if they are indexed. If the page is indexed then so is your link. When creating your links try using a unique username for the accounts or if they are articles make sure you include a fairly unique phrase in the article you can search for in quotes. This allows you to search for that unique word or phrase to see how many times it appears in a Google search.

If you use a unique username for 5k profile accounts and then do a search a week later and see 3k results for that username then you know you are doing good. If you see 100 results then you need to re-evaluate your process.
 
It also very depends on the quality of the links. Yahoo shows pretty much everything and all of the junk. I love that about Yahoo. Hope that doesn't go away when they merge with Bing. Google on the other hand is very selective, even in Webmaster Tools. They won't show them all for some reason. I know they see it. The page is cached and the link is there, it's dofollow, it's PR6, but Google just refuses to show it in the WT or link: search.

I wouldn't sweat it this much. Instead of checking your links, go build some more ;)
 
Google seems to some extent simply keep their backlink data under their hat. I've heard that site explorer results can fluctuate considerably week to week. A site explorer alternative that includes a dofollow column is backlinkwatch.