Live Search's link: operator turned off

[MarkWolk]

I use MSN / Live search quite a lot to check my inbound links, since their results tend to be more comprehensive than others'. For the past 24 hours, any search on MSN / Live with the search string link:example.com gives a blank page (= a totally white page). Is is something specific to my IP / PC, or has anybody else noticed it? - Other searches do work OK for me.

[BillyS]

Same here, blank page.

[readingonly]

Try linkdomain:example.com. This is working for some of my domains... sometimes.

[crobb305]

blank page

[Finalclue]

Hasen't anyone had a closer look of what this could be?

[gndv]

Was concerned they banned my IP at first ;)

Regular searches and "site:" searches still working. Haven't played around with others yet.

Glad to hear it's not me.

-GNDV

[Algebrator]

notice that simply searching for

link command
link comand

also brings blank page.

[Regent]

Really bizarre. I also tried "link com" and "link comma" and they produce a blank page. Anything that starts with link and has "com" following it also produces a blank page. I think Live is just messed up now.

In fact, any combination of the "link" plus "com" will make MSN/Live produce a blank page, as long as the "link" part comes before the "com" part, for example:

1) link hello com
2) 122link234 heycom
3) linkage fast commets
4) linkstore commercial

Live is losing millions of $$ is keywords that follow this pattern. Looks like a programmer messed up a regular expression!

[NicoleA]

This blank page thing is how they treat 'forbidden' searches, or so I've heard. I wonder if they're taking away the backlink feature for good. If so, it's a pretty rude way to do it.

[MarkWolk]

linkdomain:example.com does work for me, though.

[mann3r]

looking at msn also to check my links, but its seems i go also on a blank page, even linkdomain

[ramachandra]

Yup, me too getting the blank page when search for backlinks using link: command, what could be the reason?

[crobb305]

This blank page thing is how they treat 'forbidden' searches

Rather amateurish and unprofessional if you ask me.

[Regent]

I don't agree that the blank page is a forbidden search. How can you say that searching for "link commercial store" is a forbidden search?

[MarkWolk]

You are right! The search

link commercial store

also leads to a blank page, whereas

Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link German botanist

does give relevant results. It looks like some kind of bug that may be the prelude of some changes, possibly the removal of the link: operator.

[edited by: MarkWolk at 6:59 pm (utc) on Mar. 27, 2007]

[crobb305]

I don't agree that the blank page is a forbidden search. How can you say that searching for "link commercial store" is a forbidden search?

Yeah, I don't think it is a forbidden search either. A "forbidden page" would serve a 403 error code. This isn't happening. It is simply a blank page so something is just not working. I think.

[NicoleA]

Crobb, MSN doesn't give 403 errors for searches they don't want you doing, they just blank page it.

[Regent]

There is more evidence that this is a software bug and not a removal of the "link:" feature. See my example above that show that any combo of "link" plus "com" produce a blank page. These are not forbidden searches as they are random. Again see my examples above.

[NicoleA]

Yeah, Regent, it is a bug...they messed up other searches when they blocked backlink checking. Inadvertent collateral damage.

I'm not saying they're blocking backlink searches forever (I really hope they don't) but they appear to be doing that for now.

[Regent]

Either MSN blocked "link:" searches and mistakingly also blocked many other searches such as "linkstore commercial" or the other way around -- they blocked some other search that contained the word "link" and they inadvertently trashed their own "link:" feature.

I just wish that MSN would make some kind of indication to the community so we can know for sure what the story is.

[Kristos]

They have changed the syntax to "links to" (no quotes) and then the domain

[crobb305]

They have changed the syntax to "links to" (no quotes) and then the domain

and no colon. Just "links to example.com"

[msndude]

Hey folks, here's the official response on this:
[blogs.msdn.com...]

[Jane_Doe]

Thank you for the update, msndude.

[bwnbwn]

linkfromdomain:example.com still works

[auroinf0]

Hey yes.... its still like that.

I just checked for my site and its a blank page.

[crobb305]

linkfromdomain:example.com still works

And as stated above, "links to example.com" still works to see SOME backlinks. This seems to provide a very partial list and is probably useless for all practical purposes.

[randle]

Thats to bad, of all the ways to check your back links I liked MSN the best.

[tictoc]

I liked MSN the best because it was not as clunky as the Yahoo explorer. I guess we will see if anything positive comes out of this.

[MattJ]

I get this error for "link:example.com":

XML Parsing Error: no element found
Location: [search.live.com...]
Line Number 1, Column 1:

Using "links to example.com" fixes it as noted by someone else, thanks.