In Hyper-G and possibly other hypertext systems, a backlink is a link back to the page or one of the pages that currently link to the page you're using. Backlinks are already supported to some extent in the present Web system. Using JavaScript or a similar technique, you can add a button to your page that, when clicked, results in a request to the Alta Vista search engine to locate all the Web sites that link to your page (that is, to your home page backlinks).

Incidentally, you don't have to create a button or put this information on a page. You may just want to find out how many people on the Web have linked to your home page. To do this, go to Alta Vista and enter a search for:

       link:http://whatis.com

Substitute your own home page address for "whatis.com". Alta Vista will tell you how many sites link to you and return the list so that you can find out which sites link to you. (Note that the Alta Vista list provides only those links to your site that they have currently indexed.)

05 Apr 2005