How accurate is Yahoo backlinks?

by AFI
15 replies
  • SEO
  • |
After hiring two different outsourced employees to submit backlinks for me, I am very upset to see that my site has only "12 backlinks" according to Yahoo. How accurate is this information and why is the number so low since they've been working for weeks submitting links?
#accurate #backlinks #yahoo
  • Profile picture of the author jesus3
    hmm not sure if im correct but i think yahoo indexes pages faster therefore you see your backlinks coming up with them first. ive noticed this with all my sites. what type of backlinking are they building because some methods take longer to show up than others.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    It's not how many were submitted or when, it's if and when SE bots find those backlinks that is important.

    If they are tucked away on some remote forgotten profile page that search engines rarely crawl, it's gonna take some time for them to be found.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    It's not how many were submitted or when, it's if and when SE bots find those backlinks that is important.

    If they are tucked away on some remote forgotten profile page that search engines rarely crawl, it's gonna take some time for them to be found.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by AFI View Post

    How accurate is this information
    Not very accurate, usually. It's worth checking other backlink-checking sites, in addition to Yahoo.

    Originally Posted by AFI View Post

    why is the number so low since they've been working for weeks submitting links?
    They may be backlinks that haven't yet been indexed (which, if so, means the position might gradually improve, though it isn't, in itself, exactly a promising sign).

    But with backlinks, as with so much else in SEO, quality and relevance are far more important than quantity. (For example, forum profile backlinks in half-dead forums have almost no value at all.)

    Do you have from them a list of what they've done, to check yourself, see what's indexed, what sort of backlinks they are, and whether the sites they're on look "worth having"?

    Call me a skepchick, but a common ploy among mass-backlink builders (of the type typically found on Fiverr.com and on other, similar sites), is to advertise something like "PR-3 backlinks" which actually turn out, on examination, to be on PR-0 pages on sites of which the home page happens to be PR-3. Note the not-so-subtle distinction!
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    Call me a skepchick, but a common ploy among mass-backlink builders (of the type typically found on Fiverr.com and on other, similar sites), is to advertise something "PR-3 backlinks" which actually turn out, on examination, to be on PR-0 pages on sites of which the home page happens to be PR-3. Note the not-so-subtle distinction!
    skepchick!

    That is the common tactic used by every from Angela on down to the dude with xrumer. Misleading information that they hype with questionable data to support their claims. Next they'll tell you that .edu backlinks are better. It's a lot of hogwash.
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  • Profile picture of the author AFI
    Originally Posted by John McEachern View Post

    May I ask when these guys started building the backlinks for you and what they charged? Oh, how many pages or posts are they building backlinks for?
    One of them was working for $1.50/hr and one of them was working for $3.33/hr. They were both working 10 hours a week for me (2 hours a day).

    I don't really understand your second question. But they both averaged about 30 backlinks per day and I had them working for almost 2 months now.
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    • Profile picture of the author AFI
      Originally Posted by John McEachern View Post

      Do you know what kind of backlinking methods have worked for you in the past? To me, that seems like the best way to get the most out of a backlink outsourcer.
      I don't have a past, I'm brand new to this just trying to figure out how to get lots of backlinks.
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    • Profile picture of the author kayf
      How do you find people to work for $2-$3 per hour for you submitting backlinks?
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      • Profile picture of the author jwee
        Originally Posted by kayf View Post

        How do you find people to work for $2-$3 per hour for you submitting backlinks?
        You might want to try odesk.com.
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        • Profile picture of the author dburk
          Hi Jennifer,

          Since you are paying your workers to create links you can and should ask them to maintain a log of when and where they place each and every link. This will give you details about their performance, such as how many links they place per hour. This helps to determine if your expense is justified by the effort and whether the results are worth the cost.

          Don't rely on Site Explorer as the definitive measure. Use the log to verify all your placements. The log will come in handy if and when you choose to use a tool to verify placements and confirm the indexing of those placements.

          Besides measuring the effort put forth by your workers, you can use the log to maintain a database of results that can likewise be measured over time for cost effectiveness. You need to spot check the log to verify that each link that is placed is indeed remaining in place and whether or not they are being indexed. Over time you will spot issues that can be addressed by training or focusing efforts in the best places.

          You may find that measuring and monitoring your employees performance tends to enhance their productivity, especially when you make it clear that you are paying close attention and you care a great deal about the results of their work. Calculate their average performance per hour, both in effort and in positive results. Share this metric with them in a timely and frequent basis and you may see an improving trend in your overall results.
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  • Profile picture of the author zerofill
    Yahoo is so far from accurate... that the word accurate should not even be used in the same sentence as site explorer.

    The big problem that a lot of people have that I see all the time is...

    They think if it doesn't show up in Yahoo site explorer the link hasn't been seen by search engines... that is very far from the truth in most instances. Also the big misconception is that if it doesn't show up in Yahoo site explorer it isn't indexed or hasn't been crawled.

    How the hell can Yahoo tell you if Google or another search engine (besides Bing) has seen that link?

    Short answer: "They can't"
    Long answer: "They have no access to that data"

    And Next Answer:
    Yahoo doesn't display all the links it finds. And I find that especially true when it comes to mass linking. When they find several links of the same type... they often do not display them all in Site Explorer.

    How do I know this? By monitoring the crawlers on sites in the past and knowing they (Yahoo and others) have crawled certain links that never showed up in site explorer.

    Now another reason you have an issue where you may not see the links showing up is the fact that search engines only crawl so much of a site per day / per crawl. If they spent the whole day crawling a site over and over again they would be in trouble from hosting providers and website owners. Because the stress they would put on a hosting company's network as a whole, would not make them go, "I LOVE IT WHEN THE CRAWLERS CRIPPLE OUR NETWORK!!! IT ROCKS!"

    Google has several bots and many times one does a quick sweep and another comes behind using the "cliff notes" from the other bot to do a deeper crawl. This is why you often see things pop up in a matter of minutes and then disappear.

    The first quick sweep thought the content was worthy of it's placement... the next time through the "cliff notes" are looked at a in a bit more detail... and the site gets whacked down to where they think it belongs or stays where it is at. Then there are the cases where it totally disappears for a few days and comes back...

    Normally a site especially a blog or forum is crawled from many doorways in (links etc)... those doorways in, are the "cliff notes" I was talking about... The heavy working crawlers come in after and check out the" cliff notes." They also will often resume a crawl where they left off before on a previous crawl.

    You find many people will do things like ping the links that are built... which really isn't pinging. Pinging is done with xmlrpc usually and what many people refer to as pinging a link in Internet Marketing, is only pinging in the internet marketing world and not actual real pinging.

    You will find some people that use things like: Links 2 RSS - Convert a list of URLs to RSS feeds
    Or a similar custom made tool.

    To take a lot of mass created links and submit them to rss feeds so they are seen quicker...

    We typically don't... we normally just build them and leave them alone. The fact that the sites start moving all over when we start backlinking them after not moving at all proves the links are getting seen. Even when they don't show up in everyone's favorite (meaningless) tool... Site Explorer... I used to use it a lot... it is nice to just look at to see if you see any sites linking back to you naturally, as it will show this most times...but useless for much of anything else. Now I rarely look at it more than once a month...

    In the grand scheme of things... if your getting a report back that shows the links are being built by these people... then that is the best you can hope for. Profile links and mass linking get confused by people... they think it is the "end all be all" and they won't have to do any work ever. Well in it's current state that isn't the case. Because you still need diversity in your backlink portfolio...

    So even though we build mass profile links all the time... it isn't the only thing you should be doing. It works when you target some of the things we do and combine them into a traffic funnel... but when you are trying to get a lot of traffic to one particular site by just backlinks alone... you have to do work... or pay to have work done.

    Articles, press releases, social sites, rss feeds, bookmarking, blog commenting, Directory submissions... etc... etc...

    We even use cheap paid traffic since traffic volume = popularity of a site to search engines (especially Google) and often leads to much better rankings.

    We build traffic funnels all the time that don't even have an end goal of boosting the money site in the serps. We use them to drive traffic to our money site that is more focused on selling than ranking...

    Bottom line is... don't rely on yahoo site explorer to tell you how you are doing... rely on looking at your web stats and looking at the referrer / crawler statistics... That gives you real info that is useful... Site Explorer doesn't...

    Mass linking works and so does most other forms of linking if you are doing them correctly. I know that sounds like a: "duh... I figured that" type of statement... but people tend to believe everything they read on forums without actually testing anything for themselves... When they don't see the results they give up.

    Just like people that get scared when their site disappears from Google... that is normal... and let's say it disappears and doesn't show up again for a week... did you know that if you continues to build links to it the likelihood of it coming back is pretty high? Every site comes back for me... because I continue to build links to them non stop...

    So I am doing one of my babbling things again... so I am stopping now...
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  • Profile picture of the author Marketing Ignite
    If they had been submitting your site to high quality sites then you should have many more. The problem with the SEO community is sometimes the information that circulates around such as "I can submit your site to 1000 directories" is useless if they cannot guarantee a listing in a high quality directory. All these mass submissions is not going to take you very far....

    This is one example but I would recommend to properly learn the SEO and you will be more smarter in knowing who to hire for your outsourced SEO. I have an SEO training course where I will show you how to get real results based on real life examples...
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    • Profile picture of the author Dumkist
      I am starting to lose sleep over this..no really !...Yahoo Site Explorer is done !..yes its the end of the road for YSE. I have noticed over the past 3 weeks that my links are vanishing left and right..and the new links which I know are there ..because I checked are not showing yet..and before anyone says YSE only shows 1000 links ..I know..but I'm talking about sites that don't even have 200 links yet...and these links was created a month ago.

      I found this info online about YSE..they agree with everything I'm telling you and they tell you why this is happening. Majestic SEO Saves the Day | Kenny Goodmans Blog
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