Link popularity Link Exchange

Link popularity relates to the number of links pointed to a web site. Link popularity is sometimes called site popularity. META information or metadata describes what's on the page in a fashion that is easy for the search engines spiders to index them. Because webmasters manipulated these tags, stuffing them with tangential keywords to gain an advantage in the search engines. Search engines discovered that they could place less trust in the metadata or Meta tags found. The more links a site has pointed to it, the more often it is crawled by spiders, and the more often it is indexed. If you agree to link to other sides, they'll do the same for you. In Web marketing, this is called cross-linking or reciprocal linking, and it's another way to increase traffic to your web site.

The search engines make an exception when dealing with sites which are hosted by the free hosts like Geocities, Tripod etc. For the free hosts, it is the link popularity of the individual pages which count.

Facts: Some search engines are dropping sites that don't have at least one external link. And this could possibly become a trend with search engines to help conserve database space.

How to check your link popularity in some search engines

For AltaVista, in the search query field, type in:
link:domainname.com  

For FAST Search, in the search query field, type in your domain name:
link.all:www.domainname.com  

For Google, in the search query field, type in your domain name:
link:www.domainname.com  

For Lycos, in the search query field, type in your domain name:
ml:www.domainname.com  

For wisenut, in the search query field, type in your domain name:
link:www.domainname.com  

How to know the PageRank from a website?

Google toolbar displays the PageRank from websites between 0 until 10. Google ranks websites by the links and the quality from the links that point to a web site. PageRank is also a part of Google's search engine algorithm. The Google toolbar is used by several million users around the world.

Note that the PageRank number you see on the bar graph is merely an indication of the actual PageRank used in the Google algorithm. It's not linear and there's no maximum ceiling to it. This means that improve a PageRank from 2 to 3 is relative much easier than go from 7 to 8.

What is The Google Toolbar?

Google Search Web
In this interface you can type in keywords, terms, phrases as well as URL's (Universal Resource Locators) and away you go. By harnessing the Google engine you magically fly through their portal to your destination. You will render a Google search or a direct shot to your URL.

PageRank
With any good toolbar, Google let's you know how important it thinks the site you are looking is. This rank is rated from 1 - 10, 1 being a very light, low-traveled website and ten which is a site like Google where millions of people visit each day. Your page rank is determined by several factors, keywords, keyword in URL, and reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking alone buys the user a popular rank as Google looks favorably at websites that share good karma. The larger the number of websites pointing to your site will ultimately help you rise up through the ranking status.

Read more about Google PageRank here.

Pop-Up Blocker
You get them, we all get them, those nasty pop-up ads that ask you to lose weight or tell you how to increase your libido. These advertising snippets have become annoying to the point that some websites you cannot even get on because you can be barraged by a plethora of pop-up ads. The Pop-Up Blocker plug-in allows you to receive little if no pop-ups. Google designed this plug-in as an approach to invasion free web surfing. Every time a pop-up rears its ugly head, POW! Add another pop-up to the counter. It actually tells you how many pop-ups the toolbar has thwarted.

BlogThis!
An interesting technology that was designed in the late 1990's and recently purchased by Google. Blog This! Allows the user to create a private or public diary or workspace to share ideas, search for people, create discussions and just jot down information. These blog's have become infamous over the past few years and Google has purchased the leading company in the boom.

Autofill capabilities
You may have been looking up a specific keyword or term and found a result that you liked. The Autofill capabilities cache your searching information for present as well as future use should you need to call up previous search requests.

Alexa toolbar

The Alexa toolbar is also a powerful and accurate measure of internet statistics. Alexa ranks websites on the traffic that they receive, collected by their toolbar. The Alexa toolbar is used by several million users around the world.

Advertisement