How does Google choose what sites are shown in your link:yoursite.com?
 

This list always shows some weird sites I don't even trade with or have never seen before, but doesn't show the ones I DO trade with daily or have hardlinks from.. wtf?

Also... it only shows a few sites when you have tons showing in Googles own "webmaster tools" page.

That's pretty much now defunct, on google's own admission.

Use site explorer instead, it's much more accurate. https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com

They do not show you all the backlinks in that search for a reason. If we could track and SEE which links are most valuable it would be much to transparent to work with.

You can see all REAL indexed links in google webmaster tools...
Even all backlinks to every individual page. This is a must have for any person doing SEO.

That would explain why many high-ranking sites that I had a look into did only show a few backlinks in Google....