Why My website External links are going down

[kiransripada]

Hi Webmasters and Internet Marketing Professionals,

I would like to know

1.Why My website External links are going down?

2.How many link can i exchange of my website(Domain) with particular free web directory.?

3.From where can i get exact and genuine back links to my web site (other than free web directories)?

Can anyone suggest me.

[tedster]

Hello kiransripada, and welcome to the forums.

1. Right now there seem to be some problems with the Webmaster Tools reports - there's a chance that this is just a reporting bug and in reality you still have credit for all your backlinks. If you have a record of some backlinks that disappeared from your report, you can check the sites directly and see if the link is still there.

2. A directory that requires you to link back to them in an exhange is probably not doing your site any good in Google. So the answer is most likely zero - use your time in other ways.

3. There are many different approaches to acquiring strong backlinks - and that's really outside the scope of this forum. We have a Link Development forum [webmasterworld.com] that can give you many ideas.

Some of the best threads are in the Link Development Library [webmasterworld.com], and that's a good place to start reading.

[halcyonlost]

Hi Kiran,

My links in webmaster tools has also been dropping over the last 2 months. I'm now down to 1/10th the links I had before the big update.

Is your traffic decreasing?

[dickbaker]

I've had the same thing happen. The number of backlinks that Google showed for my site had remained fairly steady at ~5000 for several years. Earlier this year WMT bumped the number up to about 19,000, which is close to the actual number of backlinks I have based upon Yahoo and other sources.

Recently WMT showed just 2500 or so links. So something has changed/broken.

[AnkitMaheshwari]

Today the disturbances in my WMT have settled after about 1-2 weeks. The links are back to normal numbers as they were 2 weeks back.

[drall]

Considerable drops in our biggest sites backlinks in GWT. Traffic slightly lower then usual over the last few weeks.

[kiransripada]

Hi Webmasters,

According My Google WMT my web site back links progress since
1st June 2009 to 17th August 2009.

(12,640),(12,556),(10,550),(11,516),(11,516),(11,543),
(11,540),(11,534),(10,556),(9,240),(8957),(5878),(5,180)

What could be the reason behind this certain fall rate of my back links.

My website traffic is not dropping. But i'm observing these above written fluctuation in back links number.

Does GWMT is not showing my back links accurately. Or GWMT is getting updated.

Can i expect my back links figures back?
What else reason could influence these factors.

[callivert]

Maybe Google's nuking spammy links? If everyone's links went down at the same time, you wouldn't necessarily see a drop in traffic - unless you were relying too much on low quality links.

[tedster]

Right now Google is laying the foundations for a full migration to their new infrastructure, Caffeine. I expect we'll see lots of WMT oddities until that migration is complete and really stable. WebmasterTools is a secondary service that Google offers, and all its technology can go wonky when the core elements at Google are changed.

[kiransripada]

Thanks for the Valuable tedster

Still i have a one query:

The only tool to check exact back links is GWMT?

Can any one suggest me Tool to get my exact number of back links

[AnkitMaheshwari]

Use Yahoo for a better measurement of back links

[martinacastro]

I read that WMT since 2 or 3 months only shows a subset of links. I analize the anchor text and the links quantity and is not related ... so something is wrong.

perhaps is Caffeine update as Ted says, but Im seeing this since the end of june...

[Sally Stitts]

Google's Webmaster Tools seems to be wading farther and farther into "useless" territory.
Feb. 02 backlinks = 7,922
Mar. 11 backlinks = 8,395
Aug. 14 backlinks = 2,855 (actual backlinks up, not down)

Since WMT admittedly only reports "some" backlinks, and the criteria keeps changing, it is USELESS to try to compare any numbers with any other numbers. So, what is the point of even looking? My visits to WMT are declining, since the data they offer seems to come from a shotgun fired into the air. They do not offer statistics, they offer random, undefined numbers, which only result in confusion and frustration. Why bother?
.
.

[halcyonlost]

Thanks for the info Tedster. There is definitely something up. I'm now below 100 backlinks for my index page. Looking at the links that are still showing their seems to be nothing special about them. They include all types of links(blog comments, forum links, directory, article, one-way, recip, ect). The good news is that my traffic isn't effected. Phew! :D

[rayjanglee]

mine are went down weeks before
and now come back again

[tedster]

Welcome to the forums, rayjanglee. Are there significant changes in your actual rankings and traffic, too? ...or is it just backlinks?