Since the start of the month, I have lost close to 600 backlinks on google. Is anyone experiencing a large loss of links like this?
None of my boot camp members have reported any loss of back links. May I ask, were some of your links on blog comments or in forum posts? Bompa
I don't consider WM tools as a reliable source to track backlinks. Normally they get indexed faster than they are visible in WM tools, and the WM tools update frequency is not constant according to what I can observe. So I think that it doesn't mean that your links didn't get indexed if they are not visible in WM tools.
I usually find that in the weeks running up to a page rank export - as we had a few weeks ago - the reported backlinks go up. Then after the export they go back down. I wouldn't rely on Google Webmasters to tell you anything as far as backlinks are concerned. On some of my sites, I had pages that used to have 1000+ backlinks reported a year ago. Now they have only 1 or 2 but they rank higher than ever.
Fluctuations are so common about the Google Webmaster Tools. Some people complain about the delay in data getting updated while others are experiencing links numbers drops. As stated, if everything is going well about sites, especially their rankings, forget about checking your data frequently.
If you are using the link: operator at Google or the Google WMT to determine backlinks then you should be aware that BOTH are only a sample of your links. None of this method shows you all the available links. Both can show you links that Google does NOT count (like nofollow links or links from URLs under a penalty). There is absolutely no way for you to accurately determine an exhaustive list of links Google sees and/or counts. So forget about trying to do so. However, if you check by Yahoo! Site Explorer's link: operator will typically show a MUCH more exhaustive list of inbound links but only those links that Yahoo! knows about. Since Yahoo! and Google have different URLs indexed, you can't use it to determine exactly which links Google knows about. I would suggest you here that instead of focusing on how many backlinks you dropped, focus on how many you can build. There will be time when you will lose some backlinks due to various reasons. But if you keep building links, you won't have to worry about that.
It Happens with me all the time I do not think this is anything to worry as some sites ( when we place the link there ) remove our links after some time( usually free sites )
This is a sign of your low quality backlinks. You should consider yourself a lucky to know about this before Google does reflect on public. It would be better to find out the ways you had done on link building, identify the low quality ones and learn to find a new link that are not met the low quality criteria.
If you know the real reason behind the link:site.com and the webmaster tools based backlink checker you will know the answer
I'm seeing some really wonky things in Webmaster Tools on sites that recently had lots of content additions/updated sitemaps they are showing 0 indexed pages in the last 1.5 days. I think its likely Google is undergoing some updates.