Google and Open Site Explorer not showing as many links

[tdawson09]

I've noticed this past week that when you search for the links pointing to a given site, by using the "link:" operator, that Google not showing as many links as they use to.

I noticed this also with Open Site Explorer, it is not showing the detail link information as much as it did before.

Is Google trying to mask what we can view now on competitors backlinks?

If so, how can we see the backlink building that our competitors are doing?

[TakeshiYoung]

Google has never really shown an accurate count of backlinks.

Your best bet is to look at 3rd party backlink tools. The top 3 tools are OSE, Majestic SEO, and Ahrefs. Each of these indexes the web separately from Google, so can provide information that Google withholds. However, these are all paid tools, and are not comprehensive, but they do a good job of detecting the highest value links.

Another great free tool is the site explorer in Bing Webmaster Tools, which uses Bing's index to identify backlinks.

[tdawson09]

Thanks Takeshi.

I am using Open Site Explorer, and notice a drop there too, but realized different results with the addition or exclusion of "www".

I have used the other tools you mentioned. I just wanted to make sure that Google wasn't trying to mask or restrict our access to seeing website's backlinks. That could really hurt our abilities to build backlinks.

Thanks for your input.