Reverse Web searching is similar to reverse telephone lookup, where you enter a telephone number, and you get the name and address of the owner. Well, if you have your own Web page it's an easy way to find out who has linked to you. But reverse searching is also a powerful technique for gauging the popularity of a site, assessing its credibility, finding similar sites, and even uncovering hidden relationships that otherwise would escape notice. Like a ordinary search, a reverse search tells you how many documents are found, which gives you an immediate sense of how popular a site is. The more people who have taken the trouble to link to a site, the more popular it is likely to be.
Popularity is certainly a useful indicator.
But it says nothing of the site's credibility or reliability, which ultimately are the most important criteria for judging a site. Fortunately, reverse searching can also help you assess credibility. You can get a feel for credibility by scanning reverse search results to see where they originate. If reverse search results contain links from many credible sources, it's likely your target URL is credible as well. On the other hand, if a reverse search turns up many links originating from free Web hosts like Tripod or GeoCities, or from student home pages, you'll need to do a little more digging to assess credibility.