Google not providing all competitor site's external incoming links?

[rhawk]

I heard Google is not providing all of a competitor's site's external links, speculated as protecting their privacy. But that Yaho still provides the complete list of their recognized links. (I assume they mean when using the term 'link:url')

Has anyone else heard this claim? Is there a way around this check?What sources do you use at SEOMoz for your Pro reports?  thanks, geo

[AlanBleiweiss]

Google has communicated that the list of links shown during a link: operation are a sampling only, and in fact just as likely to show low value links as high value links.

As for Yahoo, I've compared their link: operator to OpenSiteExplorer.org and the Yahoo result is consistently much smaller than what I get from OSE.

Then again - even with OSE, it's not 100% perfect either.

Just as in any analytics you work with, best practices state that you should a) use at least two sets of data for your evaluations and b) use data mostly to observe and spot trends rather than trust data as being 100% accurate.

[SteveOllington]

This has been the way for ages now. As Alan said, YSE is okay, OSE is great, but nowhere can you get a full list, especially not an up-to-date one.