All my backwards links disappeared

pr5 site

[spaceylacie]

I have a site with a PR5 that used to show about 400 back links when I clicked backwards links in the Google tool bar. Now it suddenly shows no results, not a single one. My search rankings haven't dropped, still #1 for my most sought after keyword and still ranking well with many others. When I search for +www.mysite.+com, I get over 22,000 results even though the site only has about 400 pages.

Any idea where my backwards links went? Could it just be a temporary glitch? When I check other sites, I see backwards links.

[trillianjedi]

Pick a couple of pages that link to you and see if they're still in the index.

Did you have run of site purchased links?

You can never rule out a glitch when it comes to checking backlinks in google - it's notoriously (and I'm sure quite deliberately) unreliable

TJ

[spaceylacie]

Run of site links, hmmm. I guess 809 links to my site from another would be quite a few, eh?

At first, last week some time, I noticed that backlinks to my internal pages were not showing up. Now, backlinks to the main index page aren't showing up either. This I just noticed this morning.

I sure hope it's not a penalty and my search rankings do not start dropping. I could probably get a no-follow added to my links from the site that extensively links to me. I don't want to lose that traffic, but, I don't want to lose my Google traffic either!

P.S. I picked a few sites that link to me and they are still indexed.

[trillianjedi]

I wouldn't do anything until you've ruled out a glitch then, which at the moment is my preferred guess. If other pages linking to you are indexed, that rules out penalties on the linking sites.

Did you purchase the run of site links?

TJ

[spaceylacie]

Thanks for re-assuring me that it's probably a glitch. No, I didn't purchase the links, I make regular contributions to the site in exchange for a link under "Site Contributors" which is on every page of the site(of which a little over 500 are indexed by Google). Guess I'll just sit tight and see what happens.

[trillianjedi]

I didn't purchase the links, I make regular contributions to the site in exchange for a link

That's a very subtle distinction that some people might not make.

Are the pages on this site with your links on showing TBPR? Do they themselves show any backlinks in Google? Have you recently checked for the existence of NOFOLLOW tags? Any "bad neighbourhoods" in amongst the other links present? Anything that would not stand up to manual review (not on your site pages but the linking site pages)?

TJ

[spaceylacie]

Well, after worrying about it for the past 10 hours, my backward links to my main page are back with the same amount the page was showing last week. Most of the internal pages have their backlinks back as well. Hopefully, it'll finish fixing itself and will stick and I won't see any other problems.

On the site carrying my link, the PR is either 3 or 4 on most of the pages(on the ones ranked-the site changes a lot and it looks like it's just the newer pages that aren't yet ranked). It's a community site that many people contribute to and link to. Many of their backwards links are from blogs and they seem to have backwards links from external sites to most of their individual pages when I checked with the G toolbar. I don't see any no follow tags on their site.

I also checked ALL the other links with mine and none have a PR below 4. I think the site would easily stand up to a manual review. It's just a community site of which I am a member. Do you think the links will cause me problems with search engines in the future? I haven't noticed any changes in my serp rankings since the links started(about 6 months ago or so), but I have easily survived Google updates since then.

Added: Just finished looking through my backlinks and of the around 400, I saw 5 from the site in question.