Google: We Did Not Remove The Link Command/Operator

Feb 12, 2016 - 7:52 am 10 by

Chalkboard9 Google 1900px

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.

Google Link No Results

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

Google Link Yes Results

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:

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.

 

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