Google: We Did Not Remove The Link Command/Operator

Last night, Bill Hartzer spotted that the link operator, i.e. [link:www.seroundtable.com] no longer returns results. Well, he is right, for some domains but for others, it does seem to work.

But for sites like [link:searchengineland.com] it does work:

In short, it works for yahoo.com, msn.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, homedepot.com and many others. It does not work for google.com, youtube.com, hotmail.com and many others.

Google did remove the link operator details from their search operators help page a couple weeks ago.

But Google's Gary Illyes said on Twitter this morning that the link operator has not been removed:

@webrankinfo the short answer is "no". For the long answer please email press@google.com @Missiz_Z @JohnMu @bhartzer

— Gary Illyes (@methode) February 12, 2016

I did email press at Google yesterday but have not heard back on the long answer, when I do, I'll share those details at Search Engine Land.

Forum discussion at Twitter.