BigDave - 1:30 am on Jun 1, 2004 (gmt 0)

OH NO! my backlinks have dropped from 765 to 422! It is surely time to panic!

Then again, my traffic always seems to do better on months that google reduces the number of backlinks that they report. The big difference in the count seems to be the number of my internal pages that they count as backlinks.

The number has jumped up and down for the last year with a low in September of around 130, to a high a few months ago of 1400. I rarely lose a link once I gain it, and I have never had a month other than december where the average daily traffic has dropped more than 3% from the previous month.

Backlink nummbers are novelty numbers that are really only good for entertainment purposes (knowing your competitor's backlinks on the other hand are quite valuable) right up there with toolbar PR and the allin commands for usefulness.

Yawn