Upcoming GWT feature with examples of untrusted links

[Str82u]

In a video Q&A, Matt Cutts mentions a GWT feature they are testing/rolling out for webmasters to know which links are considered unnatural [youtube.com...]

[lucy24]

Uh...

If nobody else is going to say it, I will.

Does this mean that g### have been lying through their teeth when they say that the widely reported Links Problem is simply a meaningless computer glitch?

[Str82u]

With the way some people are reporting that links have been disappearing from GWT "Links to Your Site" you have to wonder if they aren't going back to the good old days of discounting multiple links from a site automatically, ie; a so-called search-directory was linked to one site 5000+ times for over a year then recently became 1200+ and now 120+.

We've never gotten a unnatural link warning/email but it would be nice to see if they flag any of the remaining listed links.

[helenp]

Does this mean that g### have been lying through their teeth when they say that the widely reported Links Problem is simply a meaningless computer glitch?

Puf, Just dont want to think so....
I have 18 links left and none to any index page, they cant be seen as unnatural all.

I do have 3 links from the same site.

One site that had some links to mysite the natural way, a forum where sometimes I posted links for reviews and feedback years ago, and I have only 1 link left from that site, and the funny is that is it to the menu of my site, a file called menu.php that I use as an include.
Maybe sometime I posted that link for feedback, no idea.
but I do have 3 links from 1 site and 2 from another,
so it is not a limit to 1 thing.

[Str82u]

One site got down under 2000 "links to your site" over a couple of weeks then jumped to over 17,000+ overnight, like it's back to the previous normal.

[conroy]

I saw an early implementation of this earlier last year. I got an unnatural links notice and when I filed a reconsideration, Google got back to me with examples of 3 links that they considered unnatural. The site is quite good so I can see why they did it for me.

Removing those links never got me any increased traffic though even though I did actually get the unnatural links penalty entirely removed.

[tedster]

I have 18 links left and none to any index page

That's the clear signature of this issue - the loss of link reports for index pages. Those can't ALL be untrusted links. I think they are initially compiled separately from internal links and the two are then combined in a later step that went haywire.

This is a kind of process that Google uses for URLs in the actual SERPs that has gone buggy in the past, resulting in the loss of any traffic to some index pages! Luckily, this current loss seems to be just in the reports and not in the actual SERPs.