My backlinks are not getting through

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Kyle Hawk: Hey guys. I have a question. I am new to the world of SEO, and can't find the answer anywhere. When exactly do back links count? I'm assuming that the website that has the link to my site has to be "recrawled" in order for Google to notice the link. I have recently created a niche site and am on a blogging campaign of sorts. I post articles to 6 different directories (don't worry, each article is unique) all with a back link to my site. However, I am roughly a month and a half in (18ish articles written) and the only back links that appear in the Google Search Console are 3. None of which are written in the articles. I KNOW blogger is indexed because those are on the first page of Google for my keyword, so why aren't those back links appearing? Thanks in advance guys.
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  Suraj Gadage: +Kyle Hawk ;Answers to your question:
  
  When exactly do back links count?
  - There is no set interval of time. It takes time to discover the links since the Internet is so vast. ;
  
  Why is Google Search Console reporting only a few backlinks?
  - First of all backlinks info in Search Console is not a definitive list. The data displayed is what Googlebot discovered and crawled during its crawling process. ;
  
  However, you need to also understand that when you work on certain link building activities that are questionable then Google might not consider such links as valuable and might drop them during their crawling process (im my experience)
  
  Also, if you don't have proper www/non-www redirect in place then Google might think www and non www are two different sites. There is a possibility you're only getting the backlinks to one of those options.
  
  Hope this helps!
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  Neeraj Pandey: Hi +Kyle Hawk​, search console back links data is a sample back link data for your website and not the all back links detail for you. So always look into it but don't decide that there are only links that your search console shows,
  Search console gets updated not real time but fetches back link detail gradually so might be that you see other back links too with the time . it doesn't mean that if any particular back link is not shown google has not crawled that
  But finally again, search console doesn't show you all back links at once and that's why people use different back link extraction tools for back link analysis
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  Kyle Hawk: Thank you both for the information. That pretty much clears up some of my questions. Even though with SEO, I am pretty sure I will always have questions. What exactly is a proper www/non-www redirect? Is that the difference between example.com and www.example.com?
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  Kyle Hawk: So in light of that information, I wrote up a quick .htaccess file that changes any route to my website to www.example.com.
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  Suraj Gadage: +Kyle Hawk ;That's good. ;You can also specify a preferred domain in the Webmasters account.Which Google will use for your site to index URLs in the search results.
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  Neeraj Pandey: Yeah as +Suraj Gadage​ said you need to set your preferred domain but for www and non www case or http and https case you need to add all versions then only google will accept your request
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  Kyle Hawk: Thank you all for the information and the help! =D
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  Ryan Cramer: Just a quick tip: Unless it has changed, any 301 redirect whether from htaccess or otherwise, has a slight drop in value according to an old video by Matt Cutts. ; ;If you can change the links on your articles from non-www to your preferred www, that might be a good idea.  ;
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  Kyle Hawk: Well all of my links on my articles are formatted www anyway, just a precaution, but thank you for that info! That is very intriguing.
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  Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this week's SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:15:56 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/my_backlinks_are_not_getting_through +Kyle Hawk
  
  If our assistance with this issue was useful to you, please consider sharing your success story so that others might benefit.
   ; ;
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  Kyle Hawk: Wow. I honestly did not expect that. Thank you all for you time and knowledge. I sincerely appreciate all of the help that you guys provided!