Do Backlinks Need To Be Indexed By Google In Order To Be Counted As Backlinks?

[hyderkhan]

Do backlinks need to be indexed by Google in order to be counted as backlinks?

I just recently used a backlink service provider. They gave me a list of backlinked URLs they generated.

It's been 2+ months, and 90% of the 500+ backlinks on their report do not show up in Google when you type in the URL of that backlink... even though the link does actually exist.

Does that mean the backlink hasn't been counted yet because Google hasn't added that link to its index?

[Dailybread]

That is what everyone says, hyderkhan. Including google and google is pretty much god on the internet. The best thing you can do, as you have a list of the backlinks, is to ping them all, maybe 50 at a time, over ten days or so. The best tool I use for pinging backlinks, which does get them recognized by google, is pingfarmdotcom. Just copy and paste the urls you want to ping and go for it. Really simple and very effective.

[John Alves]

Originally Posted by hyderkhan

Do backlinks need to be indexed by Google in order to be counted as backlinks?

I just recently used a backlink service provider. They gave me a list of backlinked URLs they generated.

It's been 2+ months, and 90% of the 500+ backlinks on their report do not show up in Google when you type in the URL of that backlink... even though the link does actually exist.

Does that mean the backlink hasn't been counted yet because Google hasn't added that link to its index?

No, they don't have to be indexed to be counted towards ranking improvement. There is a high chance that all of those backlinks have already been picked up by Google. As of right now, the backlinks may not be giving full link power due to Google's sophisticated algorithms. However, they will give off full link power eventually, and your rankings will improve. Just build more backlinks for the future.

[packerfan]

Originally Posted by John Alves

No, they don't have to be indexed to be counted towards ranking improvement. There is a high chance that all of those backlinks have already been picked up by Google. As of right now, the backlinks may not be giving full link power due to Google's sophisticated algorithms. However, they will give off full link power eventually, and your rankings will improve. Just build more backlinks for the future.

So how would Google know about the link if it isn't in their index?

[John Alves]

Originally Posted by packerfan

So how would Google know about the link if it isn't in their index?

A lot of backlinks are located on pages that don't contain content. Therefore, they never show up in Google's index or in backlink checker tools. The backlinks that normally get found are ones that are located on content filled pages. Forum Profile backlinks rarely get indexed because they don't have much content. Google doesn't need to index a backlink. It provides no help towards search engine users. Google knows about the backlinks because they have spiders that crawl around the web visiting websites. The backlinks are added towards ranking calculations, but they are left out of the index.

The conclusion is that "Google indexes content". It just happens that some backlinks happen to fall on content filled pages. Therefore, those backlinks get found. However, in general, backlinks don't get indexed.

[diyakapoor]

Page which contains your back link should be cached by Google. This is enough to be counted as back link by Google. Indexing is not necessary. Just check the cache of pages, where you have back links

[hyderkhan]

Why would Google crawl a page and all of its links but not index them? Perhaps I missed something here...

[BenJackson]

Originally Posted by John Alves

A lot of backlinks are located on pages that don't contain content. Therefore, they never show up in Google's index or in backlink checker tools. The backlinks that normally get found are ones that are located on content filled pages. Forum Profile backlinks rarely get indexed because they don't have much content. Google doesn't need to index a backlink. It provides no help towards search engine users. Google knows about the backlinks because they have spiders that crawl around the web visiting websites. The backlinks are added towards ranking calculations, but they are left out of the index.

The conclusion is that "Google indexes content". It just happens that some backlinks happen to fall on content filled pages. Therefore, those backlinks get found. However, in general, backlinks don't get indexed.

And so a page that is not valuable enough to be indexed would have a backlink of what value

[Kris79]

What value has a backlink that is not is Google index? In my opinion if backlink has no content and is not worth to be in index it doesn't count. It may only count as a number not passing any juice.

Originally Posted by John Alves

A lot of backlinks are located on pages that don't contain content. Therefore, they never show up in Google's index or in backlink checker tools. The backlinks that normally get found are ones that are located on content filled pages. Forum Profile backlinks rarely get indexed because they don't have much content. Google doesn't need to index a backlink. It provides no help towards search engine users. Google knows about the backlinks because they have spiders that crawl around the web visiting websites. The backlinks are added towards ranking calculations, but they are left out of the index.

The conclusion is that "Google indexes content". It just happens that some backlinks happen to fall on content filled pages. Therefore, those backlinks get found. However, in general, backlinks don't get indexed.

[webworm]

Yes definitely they should be indexed so that they can crawl to outbound links.

[JoeHughes]

If it's not in the index the link is next to worthless. Otherwise just create one article and blast it out to thousands of sites and hey presto you can dominate low competition keywords.

[webdevpro]

Sometimes it takes time for Google to index all those pages from where you got the backlinks, and also those pages should be indexed before you can see any effect for the links you got.

[frank07]

You need index your back links, if you want Google count backlink. You can ping, bookmark, blast blog comment or forum profile links.

[Talen]

Originally Posted by John Alves

A lot of backlinks are located on pages that don't contain content. Therefore, they never show up in Google's index or in backlink checker tools. The backlinks that normally get found are ones that are located on content filled pages. Forum Profile backlinks rarely get indexed because they don't have much content. Google doesn't need to index a backlink. It provides no help towards search engine users. Google knows about the backlinks because they have spiders that crawl around the web visiting websites. The backlinks are added towards ranking calculations, but they are left out of the index.

The conclusion is that "Google indexes content". It just happens that some backlinks happen to fall on content filled pages. Therefore, those backlinks get found. However, in general, backlinks don't get indexed.

The source of this information?

[Haikela84]

Whether a URL has to be indexed or not in order to be counted as a backlink, it won't hurt if you ping all of them. Pinging will help those URLs get indexed faster.