How'd one get the number of backlinks ones site has? Is there anywhere I can nab the backlink count from for a specific site from Google or somewhere with file_get_contents?

Something like this? Display Google Backlinks with PHP

I doubt it...

I would think gooogle (and other large SE's) only generate the number of backlinks becasue they have indexed the site which is linking to it. so they see SiteA which links to SiteB and while indexing SiteA they make a note that SiteB has another backlink.

I dont think i have seen this information displayed anywhere publicly which would enable you to nab it

Altho it would be rather cool if google made an API which u could use to get info about a site, Google basically has a ton of info about every site on the internet (virtually) if only eh... lol

EDIT: I took to long posting.. im not sure how that snippet posted would work not run it but i dont see how it would get the info

Simplified the code a bit

PHP Code:

function google_backs($url){ 
    $total = file_get_contents('http://www.google.com/search?q=link%3A'.$url); 
    $match_expression = '/of \<b\>(.*)\<\/b\> linking to/'; 
    preg_match($match_expression,$total,$matches);
    return $matches[1]; 
} 


However no matter whether I use my simplified version or the original, it seems to bring up something incorrect... and totally different to what I see when I look at the result.

For example, for one of my sites it said it had only 4 backlinks, but when I try the google query it shows a larger number..

Any ideas?

As the author states:
"This number will vary from one datacenter to another or from time to time due to Google's updates on links and their data."

I know my sites also have way more links than google states.

I know my sites also have way more links than google states.

Google's "link:" search has NEVER been remotely "accurate"