Update on the link: operator

I discovered something new today.

As I wrote a month or so ago, when I use the link: operator as so:

link:21cif.com

I get 48 results that link to it.

However, when I vary the same query, eliminating all the internal pages that link to the 21cif home page, as shown:

link:21cif.com -site:21cif.com

I get 7,690 results. Now that's more like it.

What is puzzling is why the number increases so dramatically, especially since the second operator is intended to limit results.  When I examine the results, I see that the term link is shown in bold in the Google results. Now I suspect that the query is actually doing this:

link AND 21cif.com -site:21cif.com

Which is basically confirmed when I try that query. So the link: operator doesn't work in combination with another operator, despite what Google says:

Find links to the Google home page not on Google’s own site.
link:www.google.com -site:google.com  source: http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html#link

I think Google needs to update its operators guide.


http://21cif.com -site:http://21cif.com is still a better query than the link: operator. 


Check out link: and -site: with a few of your favorite pages. Does it work as expected?