That’s so great. I just check my targeted keywords , google shows 144,000 results, when i click to page 10, wow, it is so amazing. Only 93 at last. It is so surprised !

Great information! I have not used this one before. Something new to work on. Thanks you.

Is there another way to check the number of allinanchor backlinks? Because if this is the only one, how can we trust to the results of different SEO tools?

I knew this little secret few months ago =P
Not only allinanchor, but also intitle, phrase match, inurl

We all know that the difference in Yahoo and Google backlink counts can be huge as Google ignores the majority of links. What’s the betting that the higher number on allinanchor relates to all links whilst the lower number on the last page relates to just those links Google acknowledges?

Hi,
So what figures do I have to take into account? The first one, over 900,000 results or the second one 226 results?
That brings me to the following question
- allinanchor:”my keyword” reveals 27,700 results in which I appear in 10 and 11th position. This 27,700 results drop into less than 100 on page 23 of Google

However, inanchor:”my keyword” reveals 7,900 results in which I do not appear in the top 10.
What to believe in?
Thanks for your answer as I start to get confused.

PS: By the way, do you know Google “sorry page”?
Well, simply keep sending allinchor queries and after 4 to 5 queries, Google sends you a sorry message telling you: “we are sorry but your computer or network may be sending automatic queries. To protect our users we cannot process your request right now. See Google help for more information.”

Thanks for this informative post about the Allinanchor glitch! I never knew about this. It will make things a lot easier. I suppose the same happens with an Allintitle search?

Hello, I have a few points to add to your wonderful article.

1) Google will never show more than 1000 results. It is very logical as most people will never move beyond 20 results (2nd page) when searching.

2) I have done some testing and you can write a query as:
http://www.google.com/search?q=allinanchor:++“enter keyword here”&num=100&start=900

Enter your keyword in the quotes.
num=100 means I want 100 results per page
start=900 means I want the results to start from 900th result.

This will go ahead and pull up the last page and give you the exact number of results. The only time this does not seem to work is when Google actually has 10 pages (100 results each). On the 10th page Google shows the normal enlarged results but provides the actually number after the last result.

I have also programmed Google Docs to fetch alot of data for me as I paste 25 keywords at a time.

You can find the formulas in this screenshot of my excel sheet here: http://twitpic.com/1ts6nq

Oops I made a mistake:

http://twitpic.com/1ts6nq is an image of a spreadsheet in Google Docs which can be found at docs.google.com. Thanks.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. However, it’s not enough to check competition using allinanchor command. Always check your keyword using allintitle and make a simple search for the same keyword in quotes. Based on these three factors you’ll better understand the real competition.

Thanks for the useful info. Much appreciated by myself given the amount of time I spend on research and SEO.

Phill

Thanks for the heads up. This sure makes it easier on us. A lot less competision for our keywords.

Google and Yahoo both do this for most phrases, and have been doing so for years, however.

What an eye opener! I’ve been using the allinanchor search for ages and really appreciate learning about this glitch. I sure hope you can share a few more ‘gems’ like this. Thanks guys, and keep up the great work.

So what you are trying to say is even if the original result shown in page 1 is 992,000, it is not the real competition. Dig deeper into page 5 or page 10 and the results shows 50, that is the real number of competition that you are up against…

So am I right to say that if the actual number of competition is 50 shown in page 5 or page 10 as compared to the 992,000 shown in page 1, if I decide to SEO the “how to make quick money online” keyword, with backlinks that is more than the number 50, I will naturally progress my site to page 1 in google.

Correct me if I am wrong ?

yea, me too
it really shows that the competition is not so hard at all

Fantastic article! I checked my personal favourite keyword and… surprise, out of the 100,000 results, Google filtered up to just 21. Thanks for the heads up!

I consider myself not new to SEO anymore, but nonetheless I have not come accross this “google command” yet!

The only one I have been using in the past is quotes around the targeting keyword. With this one, going deep into the search result pages also works in the same principle then described above.

Thanks for sharing!

I tried the example in this article and it’s not working for google.co.uk.

Perhaps the bug is fixed.

”
So, this is not a problem at all. But this Google “behavior” kills the very idea of using any automatic solutions for allinanchor checking in bulk.

If you’ll use proxies, you’ll bypass the temporary banning from Google.

I would like to give a quick quote on your last statement, if you don’t mind – the one which is ‘If you’ll use proxies, you’ll bypass the temporary banning from Google’

This can be an option, but currently my own testing experience with proxies was not great. Even with paid proxies, really good ones.

But if you have anything great to show about proxy service – feel welcome to drop a line.

Thanks for the information! Admittedly I never noticed that!

That was a surprise, i also tried my keyword and found that its not in hundreds of competitions but just mere 2 digits. Very thankful that you have shown this all important issue and “glitch”. Thanks a lot.

Are you sure it works? It doesn’t work for me. I tried using your method and reached at the end of google search page (89th page) but it shows the same result. allinanchor:”twitter apps” was my search.

Thanks for sharing and showing us the ‘glitch’. I was getting discouraged when I performed keyword research, but this helps to give me a better idea of the true competition.

That say Page 26 of 226 not that there are 226 competitors. I doubt that there are the 1,000,000+ competitors that Google showed on page 1 but it is more than 226.

Agree, this issue is also possible.

But still I assume that the real number of competitors will be closer to the smaller number, rather than to 900,000+

Though, once again, I agree. We don’t know for sure what other factors Google can use for measuring real competition and deciding what info to show us.

Nice “trick”, thanks for the info.

That’s funny! I found this error a few times mySelf and wondered but never considered the seo tools angle. I wonder how many keywords I have decided not to persue from this

This seem to answer a question that has been bugging me for a while. I performed the command on a number of the keywords I target but the results are different.

Keyword 1 – 44,600 results on google page one and the same throughout up to page 20 when I decided to call it off.

Keyword 2 – 137,000 on page one and only 556 on page 10

Keyword 3 – 203,000 on page one and the same on page 20

And so on. There must be a “glitch” as you said. Thanks anyway for your valuable post.

Thanks for this informative post.
It triggered some new thoughts on my side.

But actually.. hm,… I’m not quite sure what the whole excitement is about. Nor do I see a glitch actually…

First of I have to say I rarely checked the allinanchor command. Maybe a mistake not doing it.

Rather I always check the “keyword phrase” in quotes, to see the number of competitive results.
And then ALWAYS make my final conclusion based on the ALLINTITLE check.

And this is completely sufficient. Because the fact of the matter is, that in the end ONLY the sites that have the title keyword optimized (article title etc.) are those that will ever be ranking!

In onther words, in my opinion all that counts is the allintitle number of sites, because only those mean serious competitors. The others will usually not rank high anyway, even with a lot of ancnhortext links.

So I am not really getting the “glitch”.

It is no glitch in my eyes.
It is simply 2 different things. The ALLINANCHOR tells me how many anchortext linka are out there.
But someone having tons of acnhortext links all over the place but not having his posted content opitmized – like having the keyword phrase in the TITLE – will very probable be defeated by those who may have way less anchortext links, but have OPTIMIZED THEIR TITLE. Because in terms of relevancy this weighs more in Google’s eyes.

Just my opinion.
I would say Google’s count is correct in this case. The two commands are just different information. It only depends what you want to measure.

And in terms of checking the real serious competition, I would always rely on checking ALLINTITLE results for making my decision.

Nevertheless, I learned something, was an interesting read – thank you for posting!

Big surprise that Google is giving you information that possibly may not be factual. Google knows exactly what they are doing. They could just as well give you accurate information on page one if they wanted to. Google wants to keep you off guard, wants you to question their info so you never know exactly what is fact and what is not. To get the accurate number on many of their searches such as “allinanchor” you have to find your way to the last page of the search.
Thanks for the heads up on just more dis-information put out by Google.

The same phenomenon happens with the ALLINTITLE check.
For my keyword Google page 1 showed total of 26,000 results, on page 10 it was 17,600 and on the last page (page 45) it was 425.
So which is correct? Are any of them correct?

Hi! All the while I know nothing about it. Thanks for this important information and will make a through search for any keywords using this allinanchor for back links.

Awesome information, but for some reason the number of results do not change on the pages it is always 22,600 results for my keyword in Australia.

Great information though, thanks very much!

apologies, I went to page 20 and the results dropped from 22,600 to only 153!! this is good news for me!!

thanks again!

Someone asked if the number is 50, do you only need to beat them. Remember it is quantity and quality of links. A site with a few links from high PR sites, won’t need many. However, a site with links from low PR sites, will need lots.

cd :O)

Thanks for the great content. The same thing also happens when you do a normal search on google.

Cheers!

Thank you for the article. Very interesting. My question after performing the search Some of my key words show 71 results (competitors) on page 7. Does that mean If I use that key word in content that I put out that will be the highest page I can rank that content for?
Any help to that answer would be appreciated.

Thank you,
Daniel Petrucelli

Thanks for the tip. I have known about this for a long time for just checking words with out the “allinanchor” but the way you explain it makes a lot more sense.

I checked the main word for my biggest site and found I was the only one there. I guess i have to beat myself.

I see no glitch..I ran your test results across a dozen keywords in 3 browsers’s and G’s results were true to the end.

Must be a “where your are” data bank that triggers different results.

Good info to know though but allinanchor is a very low criteria for ranking and I personally wouldn’t fret over this.

Interesting information. So here’s the question-How do you best capitalize and find the backlinks from the sites that are coming up that are getting the most pr juice from their backlinks.

I just tried to use allinanchor for my keyword, and i was allowed to just do 1 search.

Afterwards, The “sorry message” kept on displaying.

Will have to research at different times of the day and with different IP addresses if possible.

Thanks for sharing this!

Great post… I really didn’t know about this so called “Glitch”. Henceforth, I will go deeper into the search results to exactly see what my competition is and whether a particular KW is worthwhile or not.

Thanks for this eye opener.

Hi and thank you for that very detailed article on the so called “glitch” and your explanation.

I came across this some time ago, when I realized that most of the time there was not as much competition as first thought when you do the allinanchor and also the the same applied to allintitle search strings.

Thank You

Hamant

Works for me, but not on super competitive keyword phrases.

Thanks for sharing.

Trying to decipher Google is like doing counter-intelligence work, but it is always good to know someone new has tried to crack the code.

Frankly, I just take whatever they dish out in their tutorial and hope for the best.

To your awesome success

James

As far as my experience is concerned this has nothing to do with Google trying to rid off or messing up the presets of automated tools. The rest of the web pages that it is not showing are in the supplemental results just like you search for some other keyword. Go and google “learn how to make money online” it shows around 9 million plus searches. Now check this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=“learn+how+to+make+money+online”&num=100&hl=en&start=500
Way to say Google is fooling us? No
The rest of the websites are just in the supplemental results, there is no glitch whatsoever.

I found this to be a very interesting post and information I didn’t know. I will be doing the check in future. Up until now, I have always been extremely satisfied with the results from MNF and just accepted the Google ban as it happens. Now I understand why it happens ~ thank you.

Being owner of a Dental Care Forum, i had to keep close eye on ranking for some of long tail keywords.
i wasnt aware about this glitch, thanks for informing us, and i am happy that subscribing to a site was worth this time.
I will keep it in mind next time when trying the allinanchor command.

In your example it shows, “page 26 of 226″. That’s 226 PAGES folks! 226 x 10 sites per page. Hummm…still. I have noticed this in the past and didn’t think much of it.

I have noticed a similar problem when just doing a general search for competing pages on a keyword and searching for the keyword by putting it in quotes. I always get different numbers of competing pages for every time I press enter or search. I will try searching for say “dog training videos” and will get like 50,000
results and then if I leave the same thing in the search and just press enter or search again it will change to a different number of results like 200,00 or something. I see this happening all the time. There is a serious glitch in Google

I know some will say it’s a little dishonest on the part of Google but I am glad that something is being done about people using automated tools to get an unfair advantage. Especially the black hatters

Hey folks

G.

Or also this, per your permission, this post on our blog on the topic which is close to the one you quoted in YouTube video:
http://www.freetrafficsystem.com/google-keyword-tools/

Thanks for that post OnlineProfits. The original post and your comment are useful data indeed!

I went and checked to see if I could replicate the glitch and typed allinanchor:”healthy snacks” and received 693,000 matches. Found my site on position 28 but continued looking to page 28 in the Google SERPs with no change in the 693,000 results advised.

Any idea why for some searches the reported number changes and why for some it does not?

I have encountered this problem many times during searching for competition when I use quotation marks even without the allintitle or allinanchor search.

But I never really knew why such things happen. I dismissed it off as a small mistake maybe.

But now I understand and I think I have to research more carefully now. Thanks

Wow! this is something when you think you have some handle on how google operates, you are hit with another surprise about them. I checked my keywords and its just amazing to discover a totally different number of competitors.

Wow this is a good article, I didn’t even know about the Allinachor search tool.

Thanks for sharing.

Uhmmm, also not sure what the excitement is about sorry

Because exactly the same happens when you do a normal google search. Initially it tells you there are eg 1400 results … but then soon, as you click through the pages, the number of results are significantly reduced.

Well at least now I know why this happens. Thanks

Awesome tip! It’s the hidden gems that bring you traffic