Google's report of backlinks is not ever a full listing of your backlinks -- not even inside your WebmasterTools console. You cannot depend on what they show as being complete and current, because it isn't and they don't say it is. They will not expose their complete link data to you, but nevertheless they are using it in their private chambers to create your ranking.

Link reports are updated ocaasionally for the public, but not constantly. They updae a bit more frequently than the Page Rank report does. How long have you been seeing the same number?

I been told it takes 3-4 weeks to find the other links, and another 3-4 weeks before it is calculated for your ranking.

So you may not see the benefits of a link campaign for up to two months.

And the link reports, when they finally do update them, only have a small percentage around 10 to 20% of your links anyways, so it is practically useless.

Has anybody seen anything different?

...3-4 weeks to find the other links, and another 3-4 weeks before it is calculated for your ranking.... Has anybody seen anything different?

Yes, I have definitely seen the force of some new links kick in within just a few days. The power of new links may be modulated down and still grow over time, as Google mentioned in their History and Age Data patent [webmasterworld.com]. I think that 6 to 8 weeks is much too long a time frame for most links to first kick in.

Mine have been the same for months (at least 3 months) and I *know* I have new links; I'm getting gobs of traffic from them as I type this.

Hmm, some bad spelling in my post!

Anyway, I know about it not always showing latest links etc but it normally shows a bit of a change for me after a certain period but mine has been static for a while, and I havent gained any SE placings with the anchor text I used whereas I always noticed I did before.

We had a new site added to google about two years ago. The site was optomized for onpage factors 'white hat", but was not in the top 1000 for our important keywords.

We did nothing with the site for two years, as we got involved in other website projects. Finally we got back to the site, and decided to get a listing in the Yahoo directory.

Three weeks after getting into the Yahoo Directory, we moved to position 50 with a single PR3 link, no other links were added.

After this was done, we added a BOTW (best of the web) link with a PR of 4. Its been a month, and still no futher improvement. MSN must have picked up the BOTW link as we moved up again to position 10.

One thing I found interesting. Is that onpage optimization is totally useless on its own. Backlinks are needed, preferably from authority sites, or else you will always be in the wilderness.

Im now totally convinced that the Google Sandbox is just an artificial artifact created by the google algorthim.

As a matter of fact it is this morning I notice backlinks update. However on all of my sites backlinks numbers have decreased a little :(