Why is it that so few of my inlinks appear in site explorer?

[ScottM]

For instance, Manta, yellow pages, even google and yahoo directories - why do they not appear in site explorer, and is there a better way to determine who is linking to my site?

[WilliamBay]

Since you're describing directories, they may be on a level that is very deep. There was a blog post (I think it was a YouMoz post, but I can't find it) from last year sometime that talked about the depth of directories being an issue for not only Open Site Explorer, but Google as well.

If the links are too deep (like 6 or more levels):

• The bots and crawlers don't even bother crawling that deep into a site
• The page authority that particular page has may not even be worth much
• If the page is worth a lot, it's because other people are linking to it and would get indexed from those locations instead

If you want those pages to index, you will have to go about it yourself. I remember the article mentioned that you can Tweet the page (maybe in the style of "Hey, look I just got listed here..." ).
Also if it's something of interest you could send a link from your own website. I've done that with Bio's that are buried rather deep, like Flickr or About.me.

So it's not really Open Site Explorer and Google, but rather the depth at which your links are is more than likely the issue.

If while looking at a directory in the process of trying to get a link, I would look at it's Page Authority in Open Site Explorer or using the Toolbar to find out if the page you would be on is even on the map. If it has Page Authority, it has a good chance that it's indexed at Google as well, and may be a link of value.

[ScottM]

Thanks for the advice and quick response.  I'll try linking to these profiles from pages I know are indexed.