Tag Archives: Search Engines

What Is a Backlink?

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Most ordinary Internet users have encountered a link. That blue thing that they see on blogs, Web sites, Facebook accounts, even on YouTube. Just about every page of the Web has it. And when these links point to your Web site, they are called your site’s backlinks.

Backlinks, or inbound links, are incoming links to a certain Web site or page that does not originate on that particular site. Put simply, it is a link from another site that points back to your own site. If you have a Web site, pray hard that you get a lot of backlinks, as they are the only way people will get to visit your site without you telling them personally that your site exists.

An even more important thing to consider when talking about backlinks is search engine optimization or SEO. Backlinks are one way to get a higher ranking on most search engines, provided that they occur naturally. Search engine spiders are now capable of counting the number of sites pointing to your own. And most search engines consider these backlinks in ranking your site according to a particular keyword.

If you are interested to see just how many Web sites or pages have backlinks pointing to your site, you can go to Google Search at Google.com and input link:www.yoursite.com. In just seconds, the search results would list the different Web sites or pages that do link to your site, and in the upper right hand portion of the screen, you’d see the total number of sites and pages that have backlinks to your site.

How Are Backlinks Used in SEO?

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Search engines do not publish the algorithms they use, so there is no sure way of determining how exactly they rank pages. It is, however, common knowledge that backlinks play a vital role in ranking high in your targeted search results.

Backlinks or inbound links are incoming links from other Web sites that point to your Web site. More than telling other people that your site exists, backlinks have been proven valuable in the area of search engine optimization as they are known indicators of your site’s popularity, which is a determining factor of your site’s PageRank. The PageRank, in turn, is one of the more important considerations that search engine algorithms take into consideration when ranking your site.

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The Internet and the Recession

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It is generally accepted that the subprime mortgage crisis involving real estate properties was the first domino that fell. This caused the entire United States economy to fall into what is now widely perceived as a recession. The problems in that area spread like wildfire as it started to affect banks and other financial institutions. As soon as it did, banks reacted by placing more stringent policies that made loan refinancing even more difficult for the average consumer. Soon, the subprime lenders were facing foreclosure, while those who used to be eligible for a home loan found it difficult to obtain one. The whole real estate mortgage system was out of whack.

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What will happen to the Internet if Google and Yahoo combine?

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Google has been Yahoo’s bane for years, after Yahoo lost its dominant position in search and online advertising to Google’s more innovative and dynamic search engine. Now that Yahoo is actively looking for a company that will take Yahoo under its wings, Google has been mentioned as a likely candidate.

Google’s market share in search has steadily been increasing over the past few years. In October 2008, Google processed over 7.1 billion searches to get a 71% share of the total search market. Yahoo, on the other hand, processed more than 1.9 billion queries in October this year, which translates to a 19% market share.

So, taken together, Google and Yahoo corners 90% of the search market, with MSN/Live, Ask and AOL taking up the other 10%.

It is quite clear that Google is not going to gain anything from a merger with Yahoo in terms of market dominance. At this point, Yahoo does not even get a third of Google’s numbers. A merger between Yahoo and Google, however, creates a virtual monopoly in the search market, which would almost guarantee higher prices in online advertising. Without a notable opponent, Google could increase its advertising prices and get away with it.

It would also spell problems for companies like Microsoft, which could benefit from Yahoo’s strong online expertise in order to compete with Google, which is currently looking at expanding its online business to include other applications that are not related to search.

An unlikely, but not impossible scenario would be consumers paying to use Google/Yahoo to search for information. Can you imagine having to pay for something that you have been getting for free for years?

Bottom line is, while a Google and Yahoo merger might sound like a charity case for Yahoo, it is consumers and Web browsers that will be hurt. The decreased competition will give rise to complacency or increased prices, or both. Having a worthy competitor would be better for everybody involved, including us.