I believe I,ve been boxed in for exactly 10 months now however when I checked my backlinks this morning for the first time ever google is showing I have ten as it has been 0 for the whole 10 months. Some of my keywords are now on page 6 & 7 and there are two on the first page. Does this means I am gradually been released or it is google playing tricks again? *why is it that compared to other search engines google tends to show the least number of backlinks. Are they more selective.
The sandbox has nothing to do with showing backlinks - it has to do with them factoring in backlinks when calculating SERPS for certain competitive terms. If the terms you are ranking for on the first page are very competitive, it could mean you are out of the sandbox. Google only shows a small fraction of backlinks to keep other webmasters from trying to duplicate your backlinks. Google is also much more selective about what they consider a quality backlink.
Google deliberately broke it's link: operator in an effort to crack down on link spamming. This was publicly announced over two years ago Try going to yahoo and doing linkdomain:yoursite.com -site:yoursite.com have fun!
Google backlinks are only refreshed and become visible once per 3 - 4 months. But it does not mean that they are not effecting your ranking untill this day...
Google doesn't show all backlinks to a particular domain & I asked in a post http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=248982 whether the ones that Google does show are they the most relevant, most quality, highest PR, the oldest links or....? Got some interesting answers, if you'd like to have a look.