Why are google links disappearing suddenly?

[Happy]

My website http://www.justdresses.co.uk had 12 google links for the past year and suddenly Google only recognises 4. I have checked out my competitors' links and they also have lost many of their google links. What's happening?

[Blicka]

More than likely, google is refreshing their link cashe. Essentially, if another website mentioned yours, it would be counted as a google link. If that website removed that story/comment and google refreshed that page, your page would no longer be linked and search results would show one less link to your website.

[memetrader]

The Google link: command only ever shows a small sample of the links that Google knows about and consequently is unreliable.

If you are monitoring inbound links then use link: in Yahoo search. I can see 166 inbound links to your site in Yahoo Site Explorer http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/sea...=seo-rd-se

For Google you will have to use Webmaster Tools to see the complete list of links http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.c...links.html

[Ads]

Ok. First in the source box is your url link search url. Thats the one you check for your links, no other. Your site has PR4 and no adsense. Go to my profile for adsense and get that onto your site to make money to pay your hosting. Google does not work with links like others, it only provides a sample. For true links you should have a Google webmaster account, available with your adsense, to show your true links. Once you have a link it is there forever unless the other site closed or took it off. Don't rely on G to give you definite answers, Yahoo and Live Search are better at that.