Searching Upstream The most valuable web pages are often built by a "person without a life"  Such a web page may be obscure and not rank well at search engines like Google, but you can still find these pages based on the many hyperlinks embedded within such a great page.  "Searching upstream" is my technique for finding web pages that contain lots of hyperlinks to websites that you have been able to find. Note: 11/2011 - All  Yahoo searches are now "powered by Bing"   Bing fails at searching upstream I have several alternative search techniques listed below.    Check back to this page for updates.

Look at the three numbered scenarios above to see the value in these different approaches to searching.

1. You discover a valuable web page called target.html.  Most people simply explore the hyperlinks contained within target.html.  Those links take you to places suggested by the author of target.html.  All you are able to discover, are the pages which are located "downstream" of target.html
2. You discover a valuable web page called target.html.  In order to help judge the importance, or popularity of the page, it would be nice to know "How many other web pages contain hyperlinks pointing towards target.html".  This shows how many web authors know about the target site, and they felt that the site was "good enough" to deserve a hyperlink from their own web site.   If a target web page looks fairly anonymous, you might be able to infer something about the source of the target web page based on who else links toward the target web page.  Fortunately, Yahoo will allow you to search for all web pages which contain a hyperlink to a specific URL.  This is what I call "searching upstream" of a web page.  Here are two example searches:
           link:http://navigators.com/isp.html <-- Shows who links specifically towards my ISP Page.
           link:http://www.whitehouse.gov <-- shows pages which link to whitehouse.gov which also happen to be have a domain name ending in .ru.
3. You discover two valuable web pages called target.html and other_target.html.  If you can find any web pages that link to both of these target pages, then you may discover a great "directory" such as "Joe's huge list of target websites"  for the subject covered by these target pages.

Example search Results    These examples use blekko.com.   blekko.com seems to support "surfing upstream" properly, but it gives a low number of results due to its relatively small database.
Port authorities: link:http://www.portofantwerp.be link:http://www.portvancouver.com =  Seaport links, Mother of all Maritime links.
Mircro-breweries: link:http://www.olddominion.com link:http://www.dogfish.com =  breweries on the web .
Middle East Banks: link:http://www.alrajhibank.com.sa link:http://www.kfh.com = www.alshamsi.net/eco/url_banks.htm

Here are additional search examples:

Google... you can try the following:
    -  link:http://www.example1.com link:http://www.example2.com  <-- this will give large number of hits... but these pages may not have the hyperlinks you have asked for.
    - "http://www.example1.com"  "http://www.example2.com"  <--  this gives decent results.

In the diagram below, you will see how  your "Searching upstream" results will vary depending on which pair of target sites you use:

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