How long until Google stops reporting removed backlinks?

[smallcompany]

I'm sure there's no specific rule, but did anyone observed how long does it take to Google to stop reporting backlinks after they have been removed?

If such backlinks are in connection with i.e. Penguin penalty, should I assume that, as long as links are being shown in WMT and as a result of "link" query, Google is considering them as live and therefore keeps counting them in a negative way?

For example, it's been more than three weeks since a specific link has been removed, yet Google keeps showing it in WMT and as a result of "link" query.
I checked the website in question with some cloak-revealing tools which showed nothing (no cloaking to Google). Now I wonder if it's some cache issue, or Google is simply slow on this.
I mean, it certainly crawls that website on daily bases and should know by now that link has been gone.

Thanks

[smallcompany]

OK, I missed to check on cached result before finishing my post and yes, my link is still there if I opt for in Google's cached result.

[g1smd]

It can take three months or more to drop from reports. However WMT data is not the exact same data that is being used in the live index.

[smallcompany]

WMT data

That's fine with me. I'm more worried about my belief that not so popular websites may have to wait for a long time until Google's cache for them is updated. Therefore, any outgoing links from such websites will be treated as live regardless of the fact that they have already been removed some time ago.

Or we should distinguish web results (cached pages in this case) from what Google uses whenever it calculates its scores?

[JamesWt]

It can take a month or two to remove them from the list of the WMT and then after re-indexing it should be removed.

[Andem]

I still have links reported in WMT from domains which have been expired for 2 years or more.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I still have visits reported for sites in Adsense that have not existed for 4 years. 1 click per day. Pretty impressive for a domain that hasn't been registered in years I'd say.

[sanjuu]

We've seen links that no longer exist vanish from webmasters (quite rightly), only to return months later even though they are still not on the site that webmasters claims the inbound link is on.

I think they must roll-back to older data every so often for some reason.

[crobb305]

I had two sitewides removed around April 30th, only about 50% of each set have been removed in WMT or the visible cache in the serps (on site: search). Google is very slow at spidering the web, so I'd say a couple of months at this rate. It definitely makes me wonder how WPMU.org's recovery [seomoz.org] happened so fast...all of their backlink removals seemed to be "counted" immediately. I had some backlinks removed in the same rapid timeframe, and they are still being counted by G.

[jimbeetle]

What you see in WMT isn't necessarily the latest and greatest data, never has been. But that doesn't mean that Google isn't using the lastest data in ranking, these are two completely different beasts.