February 6th, 2007
Bug in new Google feature exposes links
Philipp is on the ball covering a problem with the new Google Webmaster Tools feature that lets users see a true picture of both incoming and outgoing links. For a short time, users were easily able to see the link structure for any website they wanted.
This isn't a huge security problem — the "link:" operator is already available to anyone who wants to use it. This feature just gives users a more accurate picture of which sites are linking where.
Here are a list of websites and their respective backlink count from Google Blogoscoped:
- Google.com: 1,432,908 backlinks
(in comparison, the “link:” operator shows a backlink count of 1,750,000) - Yahoo.com: 1,431,186 backlinks
(in comparison, the “link:” operator shows a backlink count of 1,990,000 ) - MSN.com: 839,927 backlinks
- TechCrunch.com: 268,732 backlinks
- Digg.com: 492,480 backlinks
- BoingBoing.net: 920,345 backlinks
- SearchEngineLand.com: 25,841 backlinks
- Waxy.org/links: 79,428 backlinks
- MicroPersuasion.com: 195,541 backlinks
Even though the seriousness of this problem is questionble, it was very quickly fixed. To demonstrate how easy it was to get this information, here is an example:
"https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ externallinks?siteUrl= http%3A%2F%2Fblog.outer-court.com%2F&hl=en& bplink=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.outer-court.com
… could be replaced with …
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ externallinks?siteUrl= http%3A%2F%2Fblog.outer-court.com%2F&hl=en& bplink=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com" — Philipp
[image from Google Blogoscoped]
Garett Rogers is employed as a programmer for iQmetrix, which specializes in retail management software for the wireless industry.
See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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