SEO question: Why are all the links not showing up when I google search my website?

[nina]

I type in link:(URL) in google but my websites that have a direct link to me on their homepage aren't even showing up? What's wrong? When I search on Alexa's links, they show up. Please help! Thanks!

[memetrader]

Amazing that such a simple question should have two answers that are completely wrong!

The Google link command only ever shows a sample of the links that Google knows about.

To quote Google: "To find a sampling of pages that link to a URL (for example, www.stanford.edu), go to the Google Advanced Search page at http://www.google.com/advanced_search and enter the URL in question into the "Links" search box. Alternatively, you can perform a link search directly from the Google search box by typing [ link:Stanford.edu ] or [ link:www.Stanford.edu ]. There should be no space between "link:" and the URL".

Notice the words '...sampling of pages...'.

Use the link command in Yahoo for much better results.