i just checked my backlinks and found that they have dropped by 2 or 3 (again) could this be a precursor to a PR update? has anyone elses backlinks changed or is it just mine?
My backlinks haven't changed, but one of my sites has reported a drop in indexed pages from 1960 to 383, so maybe something is happening, because that same site did something similar just before the last backlink update.
thinking about it i checked it with the DP keyword/IBL tracker - and the last time i checked with that was August 13th -so i suppose it could have happened at any point during the last week and a half -(although i'm sure i've checked manually since then and not noticed anything until now - still i don't always remember to refresh the page) they've defintely changed in that period though. has there been any reported change in IBL's since august 13th? edit - forget that - the last time i checked with the back link tracker was 22nd august and it said 31 IBLs- today it's saying 29 IBLs is this a backlink update - or a quirk or the keyword tracker?
It's not a quirk in the keyword tracker unless you are seeing something different at www.google.com when you query manually.
Yeah im pretty sure there has been. Maybe more than 1. One of my sites went from 71 BL to 70 to 63 over the past few days. PR is still the same though.
What you may have seen was an "number of estimate results adjustment". The number returned by Google for the number of backlinks is usually just an estimate and not always 100% correct. I found this out when I was working on my back link checker.
It shows on the BL tracker that there is 70 BL's. Thats still 1 less. Google site says 63 BL's. Wheather its a "number of estimate results adjustment" or what i dont know, but its definately showing differnt figures for me. Either way i agree, when the hell are they gonna do a proper update.
Yes manually google is showing 28 links for me, wheras the tracker says 29 - although the tracker reported 31 on 22nd august.
I don't see a back link update, but I am posting to test our Shawn's new cool Blog feature. See my name above.
Today, while I see no change in backlinks, I noticed a sudden (and pleasing) sharp increase in SERPs for a couple of sites I regularly track. One went 33 to 25, the other 22 to 15--and those had long been quite stable, maybe +/- 1 for days and weeks on end. A harbinger?
I was under the impression that a BL update was exactly that. Google refreshing what it considers sites linking to yours. Even if they were in the sandbox, wouldn't they only appear on the next BL update? The only other thing i can think of is perhaps the pages with the back links have been either moved or are no longer available for whatever reason and Google has quickly taken those pages out of their index.
No the backlinks shown by Google's link: operator are only a snapshot of the actual links it takes into account when calculating SERPs. Any sandboxed links would already be included within these - it's only their impact on the SERPs that is 'sandboxed'. Mick
I have noticed an increase in some terms this morning as well Owlcroft. One going from 23 to 17 and has been at 23 for a long time. No-one really knows what's going on at Google these days!