Here's what Google themselves have to say on the matter:
You can perform a Google search using the link: operator to find a sampling of links to any site. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list web pages that have links pointing to the Google home page. Note there can be no space between the "link:" and the web page URL.
To see a much larger sampling of links to any verified site in Webmaster Tools:
Note: Not all links to your site may be listed. This is normal.
- On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.
- Under Your site on the web, click Links to your site.
Here's what Matt Cutts (head of Google's Web-spam team) had to say in a video on the subject:
The short answer is that historically, we only had room for a very small percentage of back-links because web search was the main part and we didn't have a ton of servers for link colon queries and so, we have doubled or increased the amount of back-links that we show over time for link colon, but it is still a sub-sample. It's a relatively small percentage. And I think that that's a pretty good balance, because if you just automatically show a ton of back-links for any website then spammers or competitors can use that to try to reverse engineer someone's rankings.
Google themselves is telling us not to pay too much attention to the link command, but that doesn't seem to be stopping folks. Let the myth busting commence.
Myth #1 - The Google Link Command Returns Accurate Numbers
Nope. Not even close. Google themselves say the numbers aren't accurate and that they're showing a small sub-sample. The numbers show this as well. Check your link counts with the Google link command vs. the number inside Google's Webmaster Tools (when you verify your account, you'll see them shown). Here's the stats for SEOmoz, for example:
Google's link command claims 1,590 links. Let's see what Webmaster Tools says:
Hmm... 381,403 seems slightly larger than 1,590. In fact, the link command is showing me 0.4% of what Webmaster Tools says exists. Running this analysis on another few domains that we have access to in Webmaster Tools, I saw numbers ranging from 0.1% to 4.4% (meaning there's not even any consistency between in the percentage of links from the two counts).
Myth #2 - The Google Link Command Returns Important Links
Tragically, a long time ago (pre-2004), Google did show only important links via the link: command, which created the myth that exists to this day. In fact, the links shown in the link: command have no particular importance or relevance. They are truly a random sample, including links that are follower, links from pages that have had PageRank penalties applied to them as well as links that do pass link juice and value.
Myth #3 - The Google Link Command Returns Links in Some Kind of Order
No one in SEO has been able to show any ordering of any kind in the Google link: command's results. Important, well-known websites may be listed on page 2 or page 20 of the results, and it is likewise with spam, scrapers and low quality sites that Google's likely not counting. In Site Explorer and the web results, Yahoo! appears to do some type of ordering, tending to show more important links, pages and sites before less important ones (though not with great consistency). Unfortunately, many SEOs suspect that, should Microsoft's deal to power Yahoo! with Bing results go through, Yahoo! is unlikely to maintain their own web index (and thus, link, linkdomain and site explorer will be gone).
As exemplified above, Google appears to be very random indeed when showing link: results.
Myth #4 - The Google Link Command Returns a Numerically Representative Count of Links
This is possibly the myth that's most disturbing of all, primarily because so many operators in the SEO field belive it and track the link: command count as a reliable, useful metric. Nothing could be further from the truth - and here's some data to help back it up:
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