link counting site, don't understand the results ??

[carpetpaul]

Please could you help me, I've a site up and running at www.cleveleyscarpetcentre.co.uk and I've started to do some basic seo work...I still struggle with some of the terminology and principals of page ranking.
I was advised to use a site at :- http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

and it gives results for 7 or so search engines. All I've done in terms of seo so far is optimised my meta (a bit) added a link in my signature on a few forums and submitted to part of a list of directories posted in a forum, and this evening used an automated tool that submitted to some more. This is the stage I'm at now.

What I don't understand is the readout that I get from the link checking tool

it says:-

Alltheweb:5
Altavista:6
Google:0
Hotbot:1
MSN:2
Yahoo:6

-----please could you explain in simple terms, why the figures for these different engines vary, how they came to be that way, and what affect it has with some bieng higher than others

I'm aware of what a search engine is obviously, but all I knew of them was that it was your choice of which to use when you search, please advise what it means to have different numbers of links at/from/with each

Yours (baffled) -- Paul

[DaveSW]

Most of the search engines are spiders. They follow links around the web. Each one of these spiders rates your page using it's own algorithm. This means they all interpret your page differently. So the number alongside each is basically how many times the search engine found links to you. The more people who link to you then the more important you must be.

Does that help?

[carpetpaul]

Is a link from the signature in my forum just as important as a link from any other place on the web ? - and do they still count as more and more links are found at the same site ?
I believe that links that come from sites which have a high page rank are worth more ?

thanks for your time !

Paul

[PeOfEo]

The link in your signature can actually help your site get indexed yes. Infact we have several spiders on this site at any given time usually, so you can actually get some decent exposure by putting a link in your signature here.

Like what was said ealier each search engine will use its own algorythm, some might rate your site a little higher if the link to it was on a high rated site, others may not. I would tend to thing though that most reputable search engines would rate a page on its content though, not on who links it.

[DaveSW]

And in answer to your second query I'm not sure. It is commonly believed that links from a page with a high PR were worth more, but recent reports suggest google may have been jesting. again.