How Does Google Find Low Quality Backlinks?
Easy. You tell Google every time you check if your backlinks are indexed.
A huge problem for SEOs is building backlinks, checking if they are indexed, then moving on without tipping off Google. Lately, there’s been a huge push for Google to detect and discount these backlinks from their index.
The most common way to check if a page is indexed is to use the “info:” or “site:” operator in Google. This little known search trick is almost never used by the general public and is almost always used by SEO tools to check if a page is indexed. A query using the “info:” operator looks like this:
info:http://www.example.com/yourbacklinkpage.html
Since it’s pretty much only SEO tools that use this Google feature, it makes sense that Google would just check their logs for all the URLs following the “info:” operator and assume those were low-quality backlinks. In essence, every time you check if a page is indexed, you tell Google where you put that backlink.
I use proxies so I’m safe, right?
Wrong. A common misconception is that proxies hide your activity from Google. The simple truth is that while proxies can hide your individual identity, Google still receives your queries. It doesn’t matter if they come from one IP address, or one hundred. Google only needs to look at all the “info:” queries to determine where the low quality links are hiding.
What About Legitimate Uses of the “site” and “info” operators?
Collateral damage. Ask your friends if they’ve ever used “info:” in Google. Unless they’re in the SEO industry, they’ll have no idea what you’re talking about. The only people using this are SEOs looking to game the system and Google knows it.
What can I do about it?
Now you can check if your backlinks are indexed without telling Google.
Stop using this out of date technique and start working smarter. Backlink Monitor 5 from Inspyder has a better way to check if you backlinks are indexed that doesn’t tip off Google. This software has the ability to check if a backlink is indexed using a randomized natural language query. This new technique is 90% accurate at detecting if a page is indexed, and doesn’t give the URL you’re looking for to Google.
SEO is a non-stop arms race and you need all the advantage you can get. You know that Google is looking at all types of data to eliminate low quality backlinks from their index. Don’t make their job any easier. Stop telling Google about the links you build and start working below their radar.
Fewer Proxies, More Index Checking
An added benefit of Backlink Monitor’s natural language query mode is that your proxies won’t get blocked. Our internal tests show that you can use a single proxy up to 60x longer before Google will block it when you’re using natural language queries. That means less time finding proxies and more time improving your SEO!
About Backlink Monitor
Inspyder Backlink Monitor is the fastest, easiest way to track multiple tiers of backlinks without any manual organization. Just drop in all the tiers of backlinks you build and let Backlink Monitor sort out the mess for you. You’ll be building better, smarter tiers in no time.
