Google Backlinks Dropped To 0

Any idea why that might be?

[Simsi]

Hi Chaps

I have steadily built up my site's backlinks over the past 3 years or so to around 250 from solid sources. No more than one or two a week. But around the time of the recent July PR update or thereabouts, not only did my PR disappear on the Index page entirely (from 4 to 0) but more importantly all my Backlinks disappeared. A call to "link:www.mywidgets.com" returns a big fat "0" although without the colon (":") i get 219 show up. As an aside (guess they are linked) all my Alexa backlinks disappeared too.

Any idea why this might be? Have I been penalised for something major?I'm sure it's nothing I did as all I've done is add content over the past 3 or 4 moths, no major SEO changes at all and no increase in pages (just 3 or 4 maybe).

Weird.

Thanks

Simsi

[piatkow]

AIUI Google only returns a sub set of back links.

I have no idea if there is any method in what is seen. My home page shows only 9, and pages that I know are deep linked (one quite extensively) are coming back as zero.

[piatkow]

I forgot to add, twelve months ago I saw more back links but had lower page rank.