Significance of backlinks with "link:" function on Google?

[Aveligand]

Ok, I have a dumb noob question.

I know that Google doesn't show all the backlinks to any given site with the "link:yoursite.com" function, but what's the significance of the sites or backlinks that do show up there? Are these the sites with higher authority? Aged domains? Have a minimum pagerank? What's the deal?

 

[paulus]

I would guess that the opposite is true. It's likely that Google shows the 'weaker' links to stop webmasters rushing out and getting powerful links they know Google will like.