The number of relevant backlinks to your site directly impacts both your search engine ranking (keyword searches) and your
PR (page rank).
It's easy to find out how many backlinks there are to your site (and where they're coming from):
For Google (keep in mind Google doesn't count ALL of your individual backlinks - for instance, if I have a link at the bottom of every page of a 2,000 page website, it only counts what it considers to be the 'most important' of those 2,000 pages - so their numbers are a bit skewed. Still, since Google is regarded (at least by itself
) as the be-all and end-all of search engines, it's important to know which links they're counting for your site)
Go to
www.google.com and enter the following text in the search box field:
link:www.whateverwebsiteyou're checking.com
You'll get the total number of links back to your site and a listing of where they're originating from.
For Yahoo! (Yahoo! DOES count *all* pages that you're linked back to from, so their numbers are much higher than Google's)
Go to
www.yahoo.com and enter the following text in the search box field:
link:www.whateverwebsiteyou're checking.com
For MSN go to
www.live.com and enter the same text as for the other two.