# How can I find all sites linking TO a webpage? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 3, 2007, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-all-sites-linking-to-a-webpage/394477 "2007-03-03T23:03:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![newcrasher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b3f665/32.png) [@newcrasher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/newcrasher)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2007, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-all-sites-linking-to-a-webpage/394477/1 "2007-03-03T23:03:27Z")
I know there is some sort of search you can do to find what pages are linking to a particular page. So…how do I do it? Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2007, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-all-sites-linking-to-a-webpage/394477/2 "2007-03-03T23:15:41Z")
You can do it in Google. Go to Google’s [Advanced Search](http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en) page. Down the page a bit, under the heading “Page-Specific Search,” you’ll see an entry that says “ **Links** Find pages that link the the page.” Put your url into the box, and you’ll get your results. Alternatively, on Google’s main page, or in your browser’s Google search box, you can type the following straight in: link:www.yourpagehere.com That will give you the same result. ---
**Author:** ![Meeko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e495f1/32.png) [@Meeko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meeko)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-all-sites-linking-to-a-webpage/394477/3 "2007-03-04T14:55:39Z")
Wouldn’t that just cover the pages that Google knows about? ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-all-sites-linking-to-a-webpage/394477/4 "2007-03-04T15:37:50Z")
[QUOTE=Meeko] Wouldn’t that just cover the pages that Google knows about? [/QUOTE] Yes. Links on a page do not emit a signal unless they are invoked. You can find them either by backtracking visits to the page of interest, or by looking for them on ‘all’ pages. The first method will just get you links that are _used_, the second, just the links on the pages you look at. ---
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-all-sites-linking-to-a-webpage/394477/5 "2007-03-04T16:18:54Z")
[QUOTE=Meeko] Wouldn’t that just cover the pages that Google knows about? [/QUOTE] Yes, but that’s about as good as you’re going to get. A link exists as a piece of HTML code in a page’s source. The only way to know where all links on the Web go would be to read through the source code of every page on the web. Which the Googlebot has done to some extent. While Google doesn’t have every web page, they do have the largest database, and each page’s link targets are stored in the target page’s record for use in their PageRank algorithm, which sorts the results. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-all-sites-linking-to-a-webpage/394477/6 "2007-03-04T16:57:49Z")
Any way to do it for a link that’s a subdirectory (i.e., [ourworld.cs.com/whatever](http://ourworld.cs.com/whatever))? ---
**Author:** ![Will\_Repair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a698b9/32.png) [@Will\_Repair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Will_Repair)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-all-sites-linking-to-a-webpage/394477/7 "2007-03-04T18:49:15Z")
For a [graphical look](http://www.kartoo.com/) at which subject is used in the links to the page in question go to [KartOO](http://www.kartoo.com/). ---
**Author:** ![Alien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/57b2e6/32.png) [@Alien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alien)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-all-sites-linking-to-a-webpage/394477/8 "2007-03-04T23:05:40Z")
Google only displays incoming links from pages with a PageRank of about 4 or higher, i.e only pages which are considered more “important” than the average page. For a long time no other tools were available, but some time ago Yahoo created [Site Explorer](http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/), a fairly accurate tool for this. ---
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-find-all-sites-linking-to-a-webpage/394477/9 "2007-03-04T23:52:59Z")
[QUOTE=Alien] …For a long time no other tools were available, but some time ago Yahoo created [Site Explorer](http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/), a fairly accurate tool for this. [/QUOTE] Wasn’t aware of this. Good to know about. Although Yahoo’s database is smaller than Google’s, it’s possible that they do not completely overlap.